Breathing
by SJlikeslists
Summary: Maddy's illness prompted Elisabeth to decide the offer from Terra Nova was what she wanted. That same illness made the Terra Nova project change their mind about wanting Maddy.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

The first thought that registers is that she is cold. This should be uncomfortable, but there is something familiar about the chill in the air. Before she finishes processing that, she becomes aware of the fact that her chest feels heavy - as if something is pressing down on it and making it difficult for her to draw air into her lungs. That is also one of the last things that she remembers from before everything went black. She should have noticed it sooner. That feeling of pressure and her airway tightening up had been coming on gradually for days - maybe even weeks. She can see that in retrospect. At the time, it had been so gradual that she had ignored that it was happening.

Her brain is moving quickly now - jumping from piece of information to piece of information and making the necessary connections. There must have been something wrong with her filter. Her lungs have been compromised. The blackness she remembers must have been her passing out when she was no longer getting enough oxygen. If she thinks hard enough, she can remember the feeling of distress when she started gasping. She would rather not remember that. She knows why the cold feels familiar - it's hospital cold. She associates the temperature of the air with the times she has dropped in to bring something to or talk to her mother. She passed out, and she is now in the hospital.

She decides that she should probably open her eyes. The room is dimmed, and she concludes that it must be night. The thought is disconcerting because she is positive that it was morning when she collapsed. She blinks and mentally checks her timeline of events. It had been morning. She had been on her way to school. She has been unconscious for most of a day. She doesn't much like that thought either. There is something about losing time that sets her nerves on edge.

She does not need more light in the room to recognize the figure that is curled into a chair beside her bed. Her brother is scrunched up with his knees against the arm rest and his head hanging back in what has to be one of the most uncomfortable positions possible. She smiles at the visible proof of her hypothesis that Josh is capable of sleeping anywhere. It takes a second before she realizes that his legs are folded up the way that they are because their little sister is sleeping on his lap. He has made a sort of a crib with his arms and legs to keep her in place. She's too big for that, but she feels her eyes getting watery at the sight of the way he is taking care of them even in his sleep - holding Zoe close and keeping vigil at her bedside. He must have been very worried about her to bring Zoe here (not all of their mother's coworkers are very pleasant about Zoe). He's a good big brother even if he is going through an angsty, argumentative teenage boy phase.

He must feel her eyes on him because he sits up suddenly (arms sliding Zoe to a new position without thought) and is looking at her as if he expects something to have gone wrong.

"You're awake," he whispers. She tries to answer, but her throat feels strange. She coughs instead, and it hurts - burns really like something has scraped away the inside of her airways or rubbed them raw.

"Mom says you shouldn't try to talk," he whispers again. "I lobbied for a permanent ban," he tries to tease, "but she said like a day or so."

She raises her eyebrows in question, and he answers.

"She had a shift," he tells her. He does not need to say anything else. They both know what it is like for their mother - what it has been like ever since population control discovered Zoe and their dad got taken away. She walks on eggshells around anyone in authority. There is an ever present threat of Zoe being removed on top of the knowledge that no matter how good she is at her job (or how impressive her resume and background in research may be), she has multiple strikes against her if she were ever to try and start over somewhere else.

She tilts her head to the side, and he correctly reads her expression. He usually tries to pretend that he cannot understand her, but she supposes this is not the time.

"I couldn't just stay home," he tells her even more softly than he was whispering before (as if someone might be listening in on his confession). "You scared me," he admits. "You're supposed to be the smart one." He looks momentarily angry, but he shoves it down quickly. She knows that he must still be worried because he never bothers to hide the fact that he is angry. She knows the part that he isn't saying - he isn't supposed to have to consider losing her as well.

She reaches out a hand, and he shifts Zoe to the side so that he can take it. He squeezes it (a little harder than is actually comfortable, but she doesn't mind), but the shifting around wakes their little sister.

"Maddy!" She exclaims in a whisper of her own. Zoe is never loud. (Maddy thinks it is because they put so much pressure on her to stay quiet when she was too little to really understand what was being asked of her.)

Zoe reaches out for her, and Josh drops her hand in order to keep the little girl from tumbling off his lap. Maddy holds out her arms, and Josh frowns.

"Maddy?" He questions. "Is that a good idea?"

She shrugs her shoulders but continues to reach for Zoe. Josh sighs and hands her over. "Be gentle, Zoe," he chides. "Sit beside her not on her, okay?" Zoe follows his directions and settles on the bed next to her with her head against her shoulder. It was a good idea of Josh's because the heaviness across her chest has only intensified with the reaching and lifting involved in getting the little girl situated on the bed. She doesn't think she could have handled having her drape herself across the way that she usually does.

Josh looks at a loss with his hands empty. There is an uncomfortable air about him, and Maddy does not know how to fix it. She catches his eye and gestures toward the opposite side of the bed with her head. He gives her a look of disbelief.

"We're not all Zoe's size," he reminds her. "It's not going to happen."

Maddy finds herself starting to laugh at the expression on his face, but the laugh does not actually come. It is a deep, hacking cough that comes instead. The fit seems to go on forever even though she knows that it is really only a few minutes. Josh has scooped up Zoe, and a nurse has appeared by the time that she is up to noticing anything again.

Her mother is standing in the doorway when the nurse has finished getting her settled and checking all of her vitals. Maddy can't quite make out the expression on her face with the light from the hallway putting her figure into shadow, but she can hear the relief in her voice when she says her name.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy Shannon was something of an amateur expert on Terra Nova. She was, anyway, as much of one as it was possible to be when one was a child and later a teenager with only public access information at her disposal. She had read everything that there was to read about it from the time that the rift had first appeared. She could recite every fact and figure that had ever been made public down to the statistical odds of the lottery selection if anyone ever bothered to ask her (no one ever did).

Some might have considered it a hobby. Maddy considered it a way to pass the time when she was ahead in her classes (which she always was) and the staff at the school just wanted her to keep herself occupied and quiet. She knew confirmed facts, unconfirmed but hinted at facts, and every rumor that had ever been within the reach of her plex. She indulged in Terra Nova the way some girls indulged in fairy tales with as much expectation of ever seeing it in person as most girls had of ever living in a fairy tale themselves. She contemplated and dreamed (and, on occasion, let out a sigh).

Maddy had never been as susceptible to the lure of dwelling on the gloomier aspects of life as many of her classmates and acquaintances, but she was practical. She came from a family with a forbidden third child. The process of being included as a pilgrim as it developed was one of evaluations and investigations and careful controls over what and who would be traveling through that portal. She knew that it was a place that the Shannons would never be going. That did not stop her from being curious. It did not keep her from building up a picture in her head of what she thought it might all be like. It was harmless enough to have a different world entirely plotted out in her head that she could fall back on when it had been a particularly rough day at school. Later, she would think about it instead of all of the things which she wanted to say but couldn't when someone was making rude comments about Zoe or saying nasty things about her father dying in prison and evening the numbers back out.

When her mother had first received her recruitment invitation from Terra Nova, she had sat Josh and Maddy down to tell them that it had arrived. She had not said anything more about it. She had merely sat there looking at them and waiting. Upon reflection, Maddy had decided that her mother had still been in a little bit of shock. Elisabeth Shannon had never expected to be involved in the Terra Nova project any more than her daughter had (even less probably). It had become her habit in the time since their husband and father had been removed from their lives to share all information about the goings on with their family with her two oldest children. Josh and Maddy had been forced by Zoe's birth to shoulder a certain amount of responsibility that would not normally have been theirs. Jim and Elisabeth could not offer any explanation for the necessity of one of them always being home, and Zoe's older siblings had helped to cover in her care as well as been put under the pressure of carefully guarding their tongues and learning to deflect the attempts of anyone who might ever want to enter their home.

Maddy was pretty sure that there was something about the offer that she had not told them, but it may have just been the fact that they would be leaving her dad behind that had been causing the strange, somewhat detached look that had taken up residence in her mother's eyes. None of them wanted that. Josh had made it clear that he had no interest in being a pilgrim almost before their mother had finished speaking. She was pretty sure that he had launched into an entire checklist of reasons why it was a bad idea before she had actually processed what had been said (he could be surprisingly quick on his feet when he felt that the situation required it).

Maddy hadn't said anything in response. There wasn't anything for her to say. She didn't want to give up on the chance that they could all be together again as a family, but she couldn't deny that the thought of Terra Nova was fascinating. She had felt a momentary fluttering of anticipation in her stomach at the initial words before her mind caught up with the reality. It wasn't for them. It wasn't for her. They couldn't go and leave part of their family behind any more than they could have willingly handed over baby Zoe to the authorities.

When she wakes up to only her mother sitting vigil beside her at some point during her second day in the hospital bed, the first thing which she notices is that the expression that has left her looking like her mind is far away for the last little while is gone. It has been replaced by something determined and focused that is somewhat disconcerting to have leveled at her. She has never been present while her mother is employing her skills as a surgeon, but she strongly suspects that this must be what her eyes look like when she is in the midst of some delicate operation that requires all of her concentration.

Her chest still has a weight to it that does not feel natural, but the urge to cough when she attempts to speak has passed. She has a fleeting thought that Josh is sure to pretend to be disappointed.

"Hi," she chooses to whisper.

Her mother smiles at her but that does nothing to mitigate the intensity of her gaze. "I'm glad to hear your voice, but you could do with some more rest." She runs a hand across Maddy's forehead smoothing back her hair. "It's going to be okay, sweetie," she says. "I'm going to make it all okay."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Home is strange when she gets back to it. It has nothing to do with her week-long stay in the hospital (an amount of time that is more common to dated books that she has read than to the modern medicine of which her mother is a practitioner). It has everything to do with the emotional state that her mother is in when she arrives to finalize her release. She thinks, at first, that it is some sort of a delayed reaction to the severity of her illness - she understands that her case was so severe that there is talk of permanent damage. She has been given lists of things and activities to avoid in order to prevent a relapse and warned that she will have to be careful in the future. She tries to apologize for worrying her as her mother is checking to make sure that she is settled in for the night, but she waves off the words and kisses her goodbye on her way back to take another shift.

"It's not that," Josh tells her as he steers Zoe away from her side and toward brushing her teeth. "She got a message just before she left to get you that made her really upset. She didn't say what it was."

"Do you think it was the bill?" Maddy asks quietly wondering just how much trouble she has caused for her family.

"Hey," her brother tells her. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be taking it easy. I don't think that involves . . .," he trails off as he catches the expression on her face. "It wasn't your fault, Maddy."

"I should have noticed," she insists.

"I should have noticed," Josh replies with something hard in his expression that she doesn't like to see.

"How would you have done that?" She asks him. "You weren't the one breathing it."

"Exactly," he replies. "I was the one watching you walk slower every day without asking why. I was the one who didn't wonder why you were so out of breath after you came up the stairs that last day. I didn't . . .," he begins even as she talks over him.

"This was not your fault," Maddy tells him so much more loudly than she has spoken since she first woke in the hospital bed that it does something to her still recovering respiratory system and sends her into a round of coughing. It is far less forceful (and far less painful) than what was happening to her for those first couple of days, but Josh still looks stricken.

"No arguing with the sick girl," she tries to tease when she can get the words out clearly. He gives her a half-hearted attempt at a smile that does not reach his eyes and busies himself putting their little sister to bed. Zoe seems to sense that the mood in the apartment has shifted and that it is not the time to cause trouble. She drops her earlier protest of wanting to sleep with Maddy and climbs into the bed that she shares with their mother without further comment. Josh disappears into the bathroom mumbling about a shower and is gone for an excessively long time. It is difficult to get enough distance from each other in their small living space at times, and they have all learned not to question it when the bathroom becomes someone's temporary refuge.

When he comes out, Maddy is propped up in her bed working at her plex with an expression of deep concentration on her face.

"Seriously, Maddy," he tells her sounding better than he did during their earlier exchange. "School will still be there later. You need to sleep."

"Not school," she mumbles without looking up at him. He gives her a suspicious glance before reaching to pull the plex away from her. "Critical juncture," she admonishes pulling it back and quickening the pace of her fingers across the screen.

"You're not doing what I think you're doing, are you?"

"Concentrating," she tells him answering his question without actually answering.

"Maddy!" He chides. "You can't do that."

"I just did," she replies finally looking up with a pleased expression.

"You know what I mean," he scolds her. "This is mom's account we're talking about."

"You didn't complain last time," she reminds him.

"It wasn't mom last time," he reminds her in turn. "That was different." The two siblings glare at each other for a long moment both thinking about the time that Maddy employed some questionable skills to get his private accounts back for him after he had left things open on his unattended plex and a particularly malicious classmate had locked him out of everything. Josh is the one who gives in first.

"You're not supposed to use your powers for evil," he tells her with a sigh.

"I'm supposed to be resting," she reasons.

"And?" He prompts.

"I'm never going to rest if I'm thinking that I've dug us into a hole, Josh," she pleads.

"Fine," he agrees after a long moment of looking into the brown eyes that are obviously close to releasing tears. "But we could have just asked her."

"She wouldn't tell me if she thought it was going to upset me while I'm recovering," Maddy argues while shaking her head. "I just need to know."

"I did say fine," he reminds her.

She slides her fingers across the screen and frowns as she scrolls through the recent messages. "There's nothing from the hospital billing department," she murmurs.

"Good," Josh tells her. "It's not about you. You can get out of there now."

"There's one from the Terra Nova people," she mentions.

"Maddy," he warns, but she is already reading. She looks up at him after a few moments with the tears that were threatening earlier spilling out of her eyes. "What?" He asks. "What's wrong?"

"They're offering to let Zoe go," she says sliding the plex away from her and wiping at her eyes with her fingers.

"But I thought they had some sort of a rule about not condoning law breaking or something?"

"They're offering to let Zoe go because I'm no longer welcome," she replies.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Arguing with her mother is not something that comes naturally to her, but she argues. She argues and applies logic with a deadly precision that would seem cruel to her if it wasn't so necessary for her to carry her point. She badgers her with statistics and death rates and projections. She takes advantage of a coughing fit (rarer with each day, but still something that causes her mother to pale each time that she hears it) to ask her point blank what she will do when it is Zoe or Josh lying in that hospital bed. She pushes at her in ways that she didn't even know that she was capable of pushing.

"You wanted to go," she accuses one night when Josh has started to look at her like she has gone insane and Zoe has taken to hiding under her covers whenever Maddy and her mother are in the same room. "When I woke up in the hospital, you wanted to go. I could tell," she insists. "You promised me you would make everything alright. Make it right for them." She throws a hand out toward her siblings and glares Josh into shocked silence before he can protest. "What were you going to do?" She asks harshly. "Abandon Zoe to take me somewhere safer? Or did you think we were all going to be together somehow? You were going to break Dad out of prison and smuggle Zoe in a backpack?"

Her mother reels back like she's been slapped, but Maddy doesn't allow herself to stop. She can't. The window on her mother's offer is closing, and she has to make sure that she takes it. Josh and Zoe have to go. They have to - she won't keep vigil over them the way they did over her. She won't. Why can't they understand that if she gets them safely there then she will only have two people to focus on instead of five? It's got to be easier to get two through the process than five. She's gone obsessive, and she recognizes that. That does not mean that she can stop. All she can feel when she closes her eyes is the fear of not being able to breath; all she can see is an endless loop of her families' faces as they succumb one by one to the same fate.

She slaps her plex down in front of her mother the instant she walks in early one morning coming off of an eighteen hour shift. Josh is curled up in his bed blocking the world out with music being piped into his ears loudly enough that she can discern what it is from the kitchen. Another one of his friends has committed suicide, and it just makes her that much more desperate to get him away from here. Her mother braces herself for another volley of words, but Maddy lets the notice on the screen do her talking for her. She has been granted her early graduation (thinks the school was actually quite relieved to get her out of their hair) and has her university acceptance with housing placement in writing just waiting for her to confirm.

She sees the way her mother's tired eyes ghost over the page and knows exactly when what she is reading actually clicks. She watches the way her eyes dart toward Josh when she realizes why his music is so loud (they have been through this before - too many times before, once was too many times). And by some miraculous intervention, Zoe chooses that exact moment to cough in her sleep.

"Please," she begs her mother. "You promised me you would make it okay. This is how you can."

Lonely isn't something that is new to her, but this is a different kind of lonely than she is used to experiencing. She is tucked up into her tiny dorm with information packets for five different departments tiled on her plex. She did her research. She knows where they are short staffed; she even did projections of likely issues to arise in expanding settlements and what paths of knowledge would be most helpful to continued sustainable development. She had never been sure how she was going to narrow down her interests into a field of study; she has allowed necessity to do her choosing for her. She guesses that most students get a little bit homesick and lonely for their family when they first go away to school, but her situation isn't typical. Her family isn't waiting for her in their apartment. Three of them aren't even waiting for her in this world.

The countdown clock in her head that tallies the days (and the hours and the minutes on days when she is desperate to have numbers that move more quickly) until her father is released from the cell where the underage (emancipated and living on her own or not) are not allowed to arrange visits is still flashing its constant presence in the background of her mind. It is no longer merely a hoped for thing to which she looks forward. It is now a measuring stick for the speed with which she needs to complete her goal.

She has a goal now, and a determined Maddy Shannon with a goal is a formidable thing. She is a determined sort of lonely as she picks her courses and studies various subjects and forgoes sleeping for days at a time in a mad sort of rush to make sure that she is mastering each topic that she tackles with a speed and proficiency that leaves her professors lining up in two camps - one offering unsolicited advice that she needs to ease up before she burns herself out and the other watching with a quiet sort of fascination intrigued to see just how far she can push herself. She ignores the first and uses the second as a sort of benchmark to keep raising her standards whenever she gets a little too caught up in where she is going to keep a clear focus on where she is.

She can't get ahead of herself. She can't afford to make careless mistakes or miss something important. She can't just be good. She has to be better. She has to be the best in her classes so that she can be the best in her fields. She has to be better enough with enough versatility that her resume will make them overlook others - others who are older, others who have more experience, others without an automatic refusal to offer if they will not bend the rules on dependents to allow her to bring a parent instead of a child.

She would say that she had to be good enough to make them overlook a qualifying health history, but her bad snooping habits have gotten the better of her. She knows that other people with health issues have been allowed to go on the pilgrimages. She has also seen the initial charting that was logged into the system upon her admittance to the hospital (they are her health records, is it really hacking if she is looking at something that is technically hers). Her prognosis had been atrocious. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, someone in the Terra Nova project had been trying to be kind to her mother. She couldn't bring three children with her, but if she was about to be a mother of only two, then why should she have to leave her now second child behind just because of the timing of her birth?

They hadn't counted on the fact the Maddy Shannon was a fighter.

She is still a fighter. She is going to be a fighter for the rest of her life. She is going to fight her way through a course of study that had gotten her application kicked out of processing for review three times. She is going to fight her way into internships that should be reserved for persons far further along in their academic careers. She is going to fight her way into a resume that is too good to ignore. She is going to fight her way through an endless list of names and data sheets until she is someone that Terra Nova needs so badly that they just know that they can't do without her.

She is going to go home to her family, and she is going to take her father with her. They will all be together again, and then she will finally be able to breathe.


	5. Second Arc (Josh)

Fair Warning - Updates to this will be very, very slow.

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Josh doesn't really get the Terra Nova thing. It may be that he just naturally is cynical (he knows he doesn't latch on to possibilities and better maybes the way that Maddy does). The could and might of his world have always been negative things. He doesn't like change (in his mind, the changes and upheavals in his life have never been for the better). Everything in his world is a trade. He hadn't wanted to go. He had thrown down more disrespect toward his mother when he first heard the offer than in the entirety of the rest of his life combined.

He never really trusted the stories. There was something vaguely ominous about the same government that maintained strict rules about numbers of children produced telling people that they had found some sort of passageway to another world where people could be sent but from where they could never return. Wasn't it just a little too convenient? They could be lying to everyone; no one would ever be in a position to be able to prove it. He wasn't the science aficionado that Maddy was, but he didn't see how more people didn't question the whole nothing can come back but sound totally gets through with no problem thing.

Maddy, however, hadn't left him with any choice when it came to his feelings about any of it. Maddy had wanted to go. Terra Nova had been one of her beautiful better maybes. Then, she had gotten sick. He wanted to tell himself that one moment she had been fine and the next she hadn't, but the truth is he knows it didn't go that way. She got sick slowly. None of the people who were supposed to look out for her had been in a position to notice.

Zoe was too little to know what she was seeing. Their dad had taken the hot-headed, short sighted route and gotten himself removed from the picture so that he wasn't even around. Their mother was so buried in work that she was too exhausted to notice anything provided that she did actually happen to be home at the right moment to notice something. That left him. He was her older brother, and he almost let her die because he was too busy being things other than her older brother to protect her, to stop it from happening, or to even see her well enough to know that something was happening.

He failed her, and he had thought that he was going to watch her die. It turns out that all he did was ensure that she died slowly out of his sight while he and Zoe went to live her better maybe.

There was something so basically wrong with that that he wasn't sure that he would ever come to an end of being haunted by it. He couldn't argue with her. All of the fight had gone out of him the moment she had placed a sleeping Zoe in his lap and begged him not to let the same thing happen to her. There was nothing to be said to that. There were no arguments to make. He had already failed one of his sisters - how could he deny her request that he not fail the other one? He didn't care about Terra Nova, but he did care about Zoe (and he cared about making sure that Maddy got what she wanted). He promised her. Then, he had spent hours crying on Kara's shoulder trying to explain to her something that didn't require explaining because she understood exactly why he wasn't going to continue to fight against going.

Maddy might still cling to her belief in better maybes and think that there would be some way around that ended with the five of them all together again, but he wasn't holding out hope that that hadn't been the last time that he would ever see her. So, he guarded Zoe like she was precious (which she was) and like she was fragile (which she wasn't) and like it could make up for the lack of Maddy's presence in their lives (which he knew it never would). He walked her to school and picked her up (his mother's schedule seemed to be the one steady constant across their move). He blew off the about his age little group that he spotted in the marketplace and around (kind of glad he did, to be honest, when the whole settlement was buzzing with how they had gotten stranded and nearly shredded by dinosaur claws his first full day there).

He didn't need that kind of trouble. He needed to take care of Zoe. He needed to make sure there were groceries in the house, and he needed to find something to do during the day (he had opted out of finishing a final semester of school - diplomas weren't exactly a thing in a society where they were still trying to figure out an apprenticeship system for educating further those who came to the colony young) besides being left alone with his thoughts. The last thing he wanted to do was spend any more time alone with his thoughts - about Kara, about his dad, about if Maddy had really been as better as the hospital had claimed or if she was slowly fading away on her own with no one to check up on her, hold her hand, or keep vigil at her bedside.

He ended up working in an ag detail because he could request day only hours while Zoe was in class. He cut giant weeds and balanced precariously on the fences that surrounded this place that were supposed to keep them safe from the wildlife (which didn't really work given that Zoe had spotted one outside their house leaning over to pick up leaves that were growing inside the confines) and keep out the "Sixers" that people mentioned from time to time without really explaining their issues.

The fences couldn't protect them from everything. There had been some strange flying creatures that had attacked them once against which the fences had been absolutely worthless. There were other things, scarier things that couldn't be kept out by walls either.

He had almost lost his mother to some virus that they told him erased memories until it shut down the systems of the victims. He thought about that sometimes - how close he had come to being alone with Zoe. There was an occasionally stirring, rebellious voice that told him it wouldn't be much different with the way he ran the household now, but he knew that it would have been.

He found himself thinking of Maddy in those moments - the way that she had always done whatever needed to be done without complaining or ever seeming to hold a grudge. He wasn't putting his sister on a pedestal - he could rattle off every item and facet of her that had ever caused him annoyance without a pause. He just missed her. He missed having her be a part of his life, but he also missed the way that the two of them had been a team - the way they worked together to keep Zoe hidden, and the way it took off some of the pressure to know that not everything was on him.

He and Zoe still had their mother because of a malfunctioning communication device. That was a hairsbreadth too close for him to ever be comfortable with the knowledge. The school couldn't get an answer from where he had been with a couple of the other members of one of the ag details working on taking out some trees that were dying in one of the orchard plots. They had caught his mother getting ready to go OTG, and she had picked up Zoe and come to find him while Commander Taylor waited.

The kind of grumbling that would always be leveraged against anyone in charge aside, Josh had to admit that the man had never been anything other than gracious about his mother's standing as a single parent. Zoe had a steady cough and had sneezed directly into their mother's face just as she was being handed off, but Josh had assured her that they would be fine. That sneeze had saved her life - saved several people's lives actually because if his mother hadn't been carrying around that built in protection of a cold, then they couldn't have guaranteed that anyone would have remained coherent long enough to figure out what was going on and how to stop it.

It had been too late for some people as it was. Commander Taylor had wandered off confused into the jungle and ended up in an altercation with a couple of Sixers before things had been sorted. Everyone had walked away, but the Sixers had walked away without realizing that they were carrying something back to their camp with them. The colony had offered help as soon as Taylor was recovered and had realized, but the Sixers who weren't sick by then were too wary of releasing their location and the ones who were were too confused to offer any insight as to where they were. Eventually, they had been found, but there had been nothing left to do for nearly two dozen of them other than to bury them.

The woman in charge, the one they called Mira, had shown up a week after the whole debacle with a long shape wrapped in blankets being pulled on some sort of a sled and requested that Taylor meet her at the gate. It turned out to be the man's son (of whose existence Josh had only heard a few scattered whispers). Seeing the broken look on the man's face had only set Josh off on another spiral of what if wondering. It might be selfish of him, but he wanted nothing more than to never be that person.

He stuck closer to Zoe than ever. He wasn't going to lose another one.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy Shannon was not a quitter.

That did not mean that she didn't recognize when such a thing as a course correction might be needed. Adapting and quitting are not the same thing. She liked to think that she was capable of being quite flexible when the situation warranted. It wasn't as if being separated from her family by either prison walls or a dimensional crossing had been on her childhood dreams of when I'm all grown up list. She liked to think that she had rolled with the changes and unexpected occurrences that had been the aftermath of her illness (as well as her illness itself) pretty well all things considered. She liked to think that she left enough leeway in her long term plans to allow her to handle any and all variables that might arise over the course of the years that she knew it would take her to fully implement them. She liked to think a lot of things, but she would willingly admit (if there had been anyone around that held the type of relationship in her life that left them open to having things admitted to by her) that knowing that there was something that she could not handle was not something that made that list.

She hadn't made a plan for that, and she had become the type of person who made a plan for everything out of necessity after being the sort of person who made plans for random things in her life in her downtime just because she found planning soothing during all of her life before.

She told herself that heavy course loads, lack of sleep, and intense studying were all to be expected and that she would simply make do because it was something that had to be done if she ever found herself being bogged down. What she was experiencing was not the sort of bogged down that she had been thinking of when she had told herself that.

Five separate majors had been something that had been frowned upon and scoffed at by turn. Maddy had chosen them carefully - that did not necessitate that there was nothing about which she might find herself surprised. Chemistry was effortless for her - she flew through those syllabi with ease and was doing independent research study projects for her major advisor in that area by the start of the summer session following her first semester. Botany came fairly easily; the math courses for her structural engineering degree were mostly tested out of before she even began. Agricultural science felt like math and chemistry combined to her. Soil composition and animal nutrition seemed like equations with random variables occasionally thrown at you for which you had to find a counter to bring everything back into balance. She actually enjoyed the degree that she had chosen purely for its practicality in furthering her cause, and she found herself wanting to spend extra time in that discipline tinkering with the information she was acquiring and seeing what all she might be able to make with it (not unlike the cooking spree she had gone on after she first discovered the finer details of chemical reactions until the reality of her knowledge of her family's finances had brought the experimentation section of the phase to an abrupt halt that she had never elaborated upon to her parents).

Forgetting to sleep because she was excited or intrigued or determined to understand something was nothing new to her. (She had turned hiding the fact that she was doing that within the confines of their tiny apartment into an art form before her eleventh birthday.) It was a part of her normal both from her before and from now. She had a heavy workload, and the sheer amount of courses she was taking sometimes left her feeling buried even with the ease with which most of it came to her - she could only type so quickly after all. Determining that she needed to work more or faster or more efficiently didn't bother her - she could and would find a way. It was her fifth and final area of study that became the brick wall against which she was beating her head, and it showed no inclination to be moved.

Medicine had never not been on her list of life plans. It had always been so obvious to her that she would be following in her mother's footsteps that she had never actually sat down and considered how she felt about the field in anything other than an abstract fashion. She had simply always assumed that it was something that she would do. The knowledge that experience in the medical field was an asset that would be needed in a place like Terra Nova just added to the certainty that it would be one of her choices.

One of her professors had, apparently, little tolerance for allowing people to get far into their degree before realizing that it wasn't something they actually wanted and required early rotations through the various departments of a nearby hospital as a part of his course requirements. She could appreciate his insistence for what it was - a desire to prevent a waste of time and resources. It was, however, a little more difficult to be objective about her feelings on the topic when his requirements were proving to be her downfall.

She had been certain that it was a fluke the first time. She had thought that things switching from theoretical to concrete had caught her off guard. She had even considered the possibility that she might have had some sort of a reaction to her first time being back inside of a hospital after her illness. She had, at one point, even considered that she should have paid a little more attention to whatever it was that she had eaten for breakfast that morning. In any case, she had returned the next day determined that she was over whatever the mysterious cause might have been and ready to complete her task. It hadn't turned out that way that day or the next or the next.

She needed to splash some water on her face and get herself back to the rest of her classmates before she failed to obtain yet another set of observation/participation hours. She would get moving as soon as her head stopped spinning. The nausea had been particularly virulent, and she had skipped breakfast in an attempt at making it less likely for it to strike her in the first place (which had failed). The combination was leaving her a little light headed, and she needed just a few more minutes.

"There's no shame in knowing your limitations, sweetheart," a soft voice spoke from behind her. She hadn't heard anyone else enter the room and jumped at the unexpected sound.

"I'm sorry?"

"You've been making runs out of surgery every day that you've been here. There's nothing wrong with realizing that what you thought you wanted to do isn't what you should be doing. Wrong comes into play when you lose where you should be because you're too busy trying to stay where you shouldn't."

Maddy had no response to make to the woman's words. What could she say as she stood there nearly swaying on her feet with the after effects of how violently she had been sick?

She needed to think. She needed to plan. She needed to compensate for this new variable. She would find a way.

Maddy Shannon was not a quitter; that didn't mean that she couldn't recognize when a change of tactics was necessary.


	7. Elisabeth

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Elisabeth Shannon didn't know if guilty was ever something that she was going to be able to let go of feeling. She wasn't entirely certain that she ever wanted to let go of feeling that way.

She felt guilty every time she looked at Zoe or caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror because both of them shared Maddy's eyes. She could cope with the way seeing the burdened look of the eyes of her reflection made her feel, but she felt she should be able to look at her youngest child without always having a compulsion to cry. There was nothing right about that. It actually left her with an additional level of guilt and concern. She never wanted Zoe to so much as fleetingly wonder if she was resented. She didn't resent Zoe being in Terra Nova. There had never been any plan or dream or crazy half thought out scheme that involved her family coming to Terra Nova that had not included Zoe. Then again, there had never been one that had not included Maddy either - until suddenly there was.

She had made a series of decisions that she couldn't take back. She had been beaten into compliance by the logic and determination (and machinations) of a sixteen year old. She wasn't sure what that said about her skills as a parent, but there was very little she could do about it in the here and now aside from playing endless rounds of games of I Wonder If. She hated I Wonder If. She had spent too much time in that realm after Jim's incarceration. It hadn't helped her situation then, and it wouldn't help now. It wasted her time; it kept her up at nights with her guilt and regrets. It served no purpose. Every bit of logic and practicality she possessed insisted that playing that game was an exercise in futility. She still couldn't completely shake it (especially in those moments when her guard was most lowered - rolling over in the middle of the night after awakening from a dream that had her forgetting that there was no husband to reach out toward or catching herself turning her head to the side to catch the expression of what she knew would be delight at the sight of some not yet seen piece of this place on the face of a child it had slipped her mind for a moment wasn't there).

The truth was that she didn't let herself have expectations, but she did know that her daughter earning a spot on a future Pilgrimage in some science capacity was not outside of the realm of possibility. She was also certain that Jim's chances were nonexistent. Maddy might make it, but that would require her to leave her father behind. Those were the rules (the same set of rules that had initially required that Zoe be sacrificed as punishment for a crime in which she had had no say). Elisabeth hoped that if the time came, then Jim would keep Maddy from doing something foolish like refusing to go without him. Those hopes made her feel guiltier still.

It did not help her feelings of guilt that she honestly wasn't sure that Jim would even make it to his release date. He had been showing signs of early onset breathing distress on her last visit - the rebreather she had left with him would only last so long without a new filter. Being in Golan wasn't quite the same as being out on the streets, but they didn't bother with the expense of air purification either - only basic filtering at entrance and exit points. It was the sort of thing that might not cause any lasting damage with a few hours or even days of exposure, but a steady day in and day out of it for years? No one could come out of that completely unscathed. He was wasting away slowly in a place where each day brought him both closer to release and closer to death via exposure. She wasn't even certain that they would send her a notice if he couldn't manage to outwait the days (the legalities resultant of one way dimensional travel were fuzzy at times). They might consider Maddy (still on the same world) his official next of kin.

Malcolm had said (twice now) that she was for all intents and purposes a widow. The way she had shut down on him both times had him changing the subject and dropping all talk of her family quite quickly. Malcolm had been a friend as well as a research colleague once, and he was proving to be a good friend again, but there were some things that she was never going to discuss with him - her marriage was one of those things that would remain off limits. Malcolm hadn't had any close attachments to anyone left behind. He didn't (maybe couldn't) understand.

She wasn't a widow. She was a woman who had left her husband behind (with his blessing) in order to benefit their children. He hadn't even hesitated; he had simply said to take them and go. He had said to take them and go as if he wasn't even a consideration in the face of the prospect. No, Malcolm didn't understand. She was a very married woman who had a husband that had been willing to put their children's safety - their future - above all else.

That husband, of course, hadn't known the entire story. She hadn't told him about Maddy - either her illness or her exclusion. She would not be able to tell you whether that had been due to cowardliness, kindness, or some strange mixture of both. She only knew that the words wouldn't come as she stood there in that space knowing that she was on the precipice of choices that would make that visit the last she would ever have.

There was a strict rule about no contact with minors that applied to the type of conviction that Jim had received that would prevent Maddy from sending her father letters. He, in turn, would not have been able to communicate with her even if she had told him that their daughter was staying behind. How would it have been anything other than cruel to leave him worried and wondering with no way of ensuring that she was alright? She didn't even know if she really believed that or only asked it of herself by way of making an excuse (she, after all, lived with the worry and wondering on a daily basis).

Maddy would gain the ability to apply for visiting privileges on her 18th birthday (which happened to fall just about three weeks before Jim's projected release date). Maddy would explain what had happened (the words "provided that he made it that long" always echoed in her head when she thought about it). It was just another burden that she had, intentionally or not, allowed to fall on her older daughter's shoulders. It wasn't supposed to work that way. She was the mother. She was supposed to be the one carrying around the burdens.

Elisabeth Shannon didn't know if guilty was ever something that she was going to be able to let go of feeling. There were a lot of days when she was certain that perpetually guilty was something that she deserved to be.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

The woman from the bathroom turned out to be named Audra. Maddy had actually made note of that fact on the occasion of their first meeting (habit had her memorizing the details on the woman's employee ID without even realizing that she was doing so), but she had made no effort to talk to her on that day. She had been too shaken (and too in need of some time to sort out her thoughts and plans) to make any sort of a coherent reply to the woman's admonition that she was obviously trying to tackle something that she shouldn't be.

It wasn't that she hadn't already known that it was time for a recalibration, but she had still been thinking in terms of work arounds and ways to make her unruly stomach and gag reflex behave so that she could continue on toward the original goal. Talking it over with a complete stranger had not been something that she had any intention of doing.

Some time spent in reflection tucked under a blanket on her bed that evening while she made lists of possibilities rated by their relative practicality had found her returning again and again to what the woman had implied - that she might be missing something that she was supposed to be doing while she was so caught up in finding a way to make her original idea work. Maddy didn't like to miss things, but she wasn't sure why the stranger's words (kindly meant as she was sure that they were) would not stop circling around in her head. It felt as though she couldn't get away from them.

In the end, only the notification that Kara had sent her a message had broken her out of her cycling lack of productivity. It would have been a strange idea to entertain a few short months earlier that a message from Kara would mean that she would drop what she was doing to reply, but it had become a common occurrence. In the beginning, she didn't know whether to blame Josh or send him a mental thank you for the way that his once girlfriend kept checking up on her. She hadn't even been certain whether or not it had been Josh's idea - she still didn't. She just knew that periodic messages from Kara had scrolled across her plex from the day her family had departed, and they had only increased in frequency and depth of content with each one that she answered.

She and Kara had more to talk about than she would have predicted - strangely, very little of it had to do with being girls that Josh had been forced to leave behind. Maddy saw the world through a filter of chemistry and mathematics. Kara saw the world through a filter of music. Even if it never made sense to other people, the two of them found that both those filters (at their hearts) were about making combinations in order to arrive at an end result. It made for interesting conversations - ones where Maddy was grateful to be able to set aside her timetables and checklists and just let herself enjoy a few minutes of conversing that were not being conducted as a means to an end. It provided her version of what one of her advisors had called a mental health break when she was originally pitching her multi major intentions.

Besides, she liked talking to Kara. As self-sufficient as Maddy had set out to be, it was still nice to know that there was someone out there who would take the time to check in and see how she was doing. She settled a little further into her blanket, put her checklists to the side, and enjoyed twenty minutes of peace in her head.

At the end of those twenty minutes, she found herself thinking that she didn't want to feel the way she had felt fleeing from rooms in a feeble attempt to make it to the nearest bathroom before embarrassing herself any further than she already had. That out of control, helpless feeling that had swirled around her in those moments had been a less intense version of the ones that had flooded through her back when she had first realized that her filter system had failed and she couldn't breathe. Out of control wasn't a part of her checklist. Helpless wasn't a part of her checklist. She didn't want those things; she did, however, find that she really wanted to know what else the nurse who had come to check on her in the hospital bathroom might have to say.

That is how she found herself sitting in the hospital cafeteria across from Audra two days later stirring something around and around in a mug that looked more like sludge from a puddle than anything she was imbibing should. Audra was giving her an amused glance as she sipped from a mug of her own.

Not knowing where to begin was not a new condition for Maddy. It had been a recurring theme in her interpersonal relationships for nearly as long as she could remember (along with a chronic issue of not remembering when to stop). The woman sitting with her took the need to begin out of her hands.

"Parental expectations?" Audra prompted. "Or dome living goals?"

Maddy blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"Why have you been putting yourself through the wringer trying to stick out the surgery observations?" She elaborated. "No one lets themself be that sick and keeps coming back for more without a serious reason. So, which is it?"

"I don't want to live in a dome," Maddy answered slowly while trying to catch up with the other woman's train of thought. "My mom . . .," the words started flowing out of her. Words flowing out of her are a pretty common occurrence; those words being about her personal life is a less common one.

Audra has been a nurse for 37 years. She claims to have worked in every department at least once, and Maddy finds no reason to disbelieve her as she takes her around in the days that follow. Maddy isn't sure what it is that she is looking for, but Audra assures her that that is the point. Not every place that they visit sends her scrambling toward the bathroom but some do (and on one memorable occasion that she would prefer to forget, a trash can shoved in her direction by a quick thinking Audra is the only thing that saves her from even more humiliation than this whole hospital experience has already cost her).

It is on the fourth afternoon of her around the hospital expeditions with Audra that the other woman is called away momentarily by a coworker leaving Maddy to her own devices standing beside the entrance to the pediatric ward. Maddy doesn't stay put - not because she is trying to wander or is incapable of keeping herself occupied. It is because she isn't going to ignore the sound of crying that is coming from the nearest door.

The little girl curled in a ball on the bed is blond and looks nothing like Zoe, but Zoe is what she sees when she looks at her. It is familiar to her. There were nights when Zoe woke up from nightmares about the population control officers and their mother was gone working yet another shift. It was Maddy who would wrap her arms around her while Josh would hum wordless tunes until the crying stilled and their little sister drifted back to sleep.

She doesn't know this girl - doesn't know why it is that she is crying, but she can't just pretend that she doesn't hear. She has to try to help.

The wretched coughing that racks the little one's frame the next instant does nothing to dissuade her. She knows that cough. She knows the defensive arm across your ribs trying in vain to fend off the pain that accompanies it. She knows the feeling of being out of air and trying to convince yourself that the coughing will eventually subside. She remembers what it was like to be confused and feeling helpless in one of those beds. She doesn't know why this little girl is all alone, but she is pretty certain that alone is not what someone that little in the hospital should ever be.

She steps all the way into the room and catches the girl's eyes as she sucks in air at the end of the fit.

"I'm Maddy," she introduces herself trying not to wince at the hurt and suspicion visible in those eyes.

Audra looks pleased with the world when Maddy finally looks up to make eye contact with her some time later.

"Found a niche, have we?" The older woman asks. Maddy would be able to hear the smile in her voice even if she couldn't see it on her face.

"She was alone and scared," Maddy answers. "I just wanted to help."

"I think that mission was accomplished," Audra states nodding her head at the little girl that has fallen asleep and remains oblivious to the conversation happening around her.

An exhausted looking woman rushes in before any more can be said, and she tears up when she sees that the little girl in the bed is sleeping. A few words are exchanged before Audra and Maddy excuse themselves - enough for Maddy to recognize the harried quality that her mother used to display when she was feeling like she was letting them down by being stretched too thin.

She finds herself steered back into the cafeteria with another mug of the stuff that she really doesn't want to drink in front of her.

"A lot of children come through those doors," Audra observed. "Most of them are scared. A lot of them are afraid to talk to anyone about what they are scared of. The younger ones don't always know how to put it into words. The older ones often want to make a show of being brave. What you just did today? Putting that little girl at ease like that? Letting her be okay with not being okay with just enough hope that there is an after to all of it? That sounds like the exercising of a gift to me."

The professor who started this whole path for her wishes her the best of luck when she informs him of her change in degree plans. She tackles a new department to convince them that she is not taking on too much, and she can tell them with a smile that she is very certain that she is within her depth. Premed is replaced with psychology with a specialization in children and an emphasis in trauma.

She has made her course correction, and she feels content in that knowledge. She has to agree with Audra - something about this change feels inexplicably right.

It's not her original Terra Nova plan, but it has become a part of her new Terra Nova plan. She can't argue that this new degree program lends itself to her planned resume in the same way as surgeon would have, but she will make it work.

The more days she spends volunteering in the pediatric ward (and reworking her schedule in ever more complicated ways in order to facilitate that volunteering), the less she can imagine not doing this in some capacity.

She isn't shy about telling Audra she was right - the real shame would have been if she had missed this.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

She knew her roommate's name, of course, that first semester, but she gleaned very little other information during their time sharing the space. The truth was that the two of them had completely different schedules - Maddy spent all her time in class, at the hospital, or spread out across one of the bench seats in the library (it helped her to resist the temptation to give in to sleep to not be anywhere near her bed). When she was in her room, she was catching a minimal amount of sleep, changing clothes, and taking speed showers. When she did take a break from her routine, it was to talk to Kara. Her roommate had never become a part of any of her routines. Neither of them had ever put in any effort toward changing that. They were civil; they shared space, but they were strangers.

Given that that was the case, Maddy could not state that she had any reason to be surprised when she got the memo from the housing office, but she still was. She had not given her living situation and the potential for changes with the end of the semester any thought. What was was working well enough, and it simply never made its way up her priority list enough for any further consideration.

The memo was straight forward enough. She would need a new roommate. She wasn't sure if that was high enough up on her priority list for her to spare much thought for it even as she stared at the words on the screen of her plex. They were giving her a chance to "squat" her room and a date by which any roommate preferences needed to be logged in the system before she went into the general pool. The general pool hadn't done anything completely horrible to her the first time around. (She knew that that wasn't the case for everyone that took their chances with the random match ups and was suitably appreciative.) She could just take her chances again and not need to worry over finding the time and energy to tackle the situation. It wasn't like she had had much in the way of free time to go around making "want to move in with me" kinds of friendships with the people that she encountered in her classes (or any friendships at all really).

Except . . .

There was Kara.

Kara would be starting her foray into higher education at Maddy's school. Kara insisted that it had been purely coincidental - she wanted a school that would not give her any trouble about doubling in two completely unrelated majors. Maddy, Kara had joked, had already argued all potential opposition out of them. They had offered her enough in the way of scholarships that she said she could make it work, and she would be starting with the summer session since the part time job she had found wouldn't take her unless she could start in June.

Part of Maddy wanted to ask the question. Moving Kara in would ensure that she had a roommate that she had already proven she could manage to get along with, but she didn't want to assume that the older girl would want such a thing. Kara already checked up on her and provided her with what she was now willing to admit were necessary breaks in her schedule. She didn't want to push her presence on her further.

The members of the Shannon family were a bit of an insulated group - the necessity of protecting Zoe had assured that would be the case. Maddy tended toward that naturally. The people she let in were few and far between. Josh had been the same, but he had been less obvious about it. Josh had always gone the route of lots of casual friends to hide the fact that deeper friendships were rare for him. Kara had been her brother's best friend. She liked to think that the other girl was her friend now, but she was just insecure enough to not want to ask a question that had the chance of disproving that thought. So, she refrained from asking.

She refrained from asking through eight back and forth message sessions and three phone calls. She refrained from asking through Kara's questions about meal plans, her questions about professors in the agricultural science department (Kara's intended second major in juxtaposition to her first one in music), and some what she later figured out were subtle fishing inquiries about life in the dorms.

It wasn't until Kara flat out asked her to look over her housing application and tell her if there was anything that she thought she should add to the profile to ensure that she didn't end up with someone that she couldn't handle living with that the two of them finally stopped tip toeing around the issue and actually discussed the topic.

Maddy's original roommate moved out quietly with a mumbled "maybe I'll see ya around" that sounded exactly like the expectedly polite insincere comment that it was after she waved off Maddy's offer to help carry some boxes. Kara moved in with the start of the summer session one week later.

College became something different for Maddy with the addition of a roommate with whom she was on actual speaking terms. She was still busy. She was still buried in classes and coursework and turning her sleeping schedule upside down and inside out to make time for all the things she had to do as well as the things she wanted to do like volunteer with the children at the hospital and take twenty minutes to give her checklists a break and talk to Kara (or go eat supper in the cafeteria with her roommate like everyone else seemed to make a habit of doing).

It was nice.

Moving from the dorms to an apartment was something that lots of students in higher education did at some point, but it was another one of those things that Maddy had not planned. She rolled with it in the same way that she was learning to adapt and roll with all the things that life kept throwing at her.

She and Kara had decided to stick together for the move.

The apartment that she ends up sharing with Kara has tracks for hanging divider curtains. They can split the space into different sleeping areas if they want or leave everything as a sort of open floor plan. They both appreciate the flexibility.

She lets Audra tease her about finding an aide position for her at the hospital during one of their sludge sipping sessions (once a week without fail and occasionally extra when they can squeeze it in). She still doesn't care much for the semi liquid that she swirls around the bottom of her cup, but Audra claims to be dependent on the stuff (and Maddy isn't about to give up their chats). She finds a professor that is in need of a paper grader, scrounges for time in her schedule to make herself available to work in the campus tutoring center (dropping a few more hours of sleep every week in order to do so), and lifts her previously self-imposed rule about only touching the interest from the account her mother had left for her to keep herself in personal hygiene supplies. (The account containing the signing bonus from her mother's recruitment had been a surprise. Maddy hadn't known that leaving the money to someone left behind instead of being credited with it on the other side of the portal had been an option. She only hopes that decision didn't make things too difficult for her family as they started over.)

She and Kara hadn't made the decision to move out of the dorms lightly. The cost had steadily risen during each of Maddy's first three semesters and taken a huge jump during her fourth (some sort of a change in filtration system regulations for campus housing had resulted in upgrades being required for the building in which they had been staying, expensive upgrades led to rate increases, rate increases led to their staying being just plain impractical). It had outpaced Maddy's scholarships and Kara's pay from her part time job. The little hole in the wall they found just about a mile away from campus was significantly cheaper, had a decent filtering system, and wasn't an awful walk for them to get where they needed to go.

"We're going to need a place where your dad can come home with us soon anyway, right?" Kara had said when they were in the midst of making their decision.

Maddy had just smiled and nodded her head. Kara was part of her family now even if Maddy wasn't entirely sure how it had happened. The days until she was reunited with another member of her family were counting down (slowly but surely), and she already had a place for him to come home to with her.

For the moment, that would do.


	10. Jim

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Jim doesn't keep track of the days now. He used to count them. He used to repeat the date over and over to himself. It helped to pass the time, and it also helped to make him feel as if he was making some sort of progress. He wasn't a man who functioned well in a state of inaction. As there wasn't much in the way of doing for him to accomplish while he was locked away, anything that helped to break the feeling of stagnation was appreciated (he could only work so many hours each day and sleep just didn't seem to come to him with any sort of ease).

The days going by used to mean days closer to his family. They used to mean seeing his children again. They used to mean another day closer to holding his wife and telling her he was sorry for leaving her to handle everything on her own (that everything wouldn't be handled in his absence never occurred to him because he knew Elisabeth - knew that she rose to every occasion). They used to mean one day closer to figuring out their future - where they would go from there and how they would go about getting there. They used to mean one day closer to being in a place where he could do something - help, protect, take care of them the way he was supposed to be doing.

Those days were gone. Everything which he had been counting down toward had evaporated in the instant that his wife had told him that she had received the offer from Terra Nova. There had been more than two years of counted days since the last occasion upon which he had seen her in person and a part of him had been so focused on drinking in the sight of her that it momentarily drowned out the part of him that recognized that there was no need for her to be present unless something drastic (and likely horrible) had happened. He had cycled through the list in the back of his head even as the majority of his thoughts reveled in basking in her presence while he could. (Josh was at that age where nearly all boys thought they were indestructible. Maddy could be sick. Zoe's continued custody placement with their family was the sort of open ended arrangement designed to be held over their heads in order to be used as leverage if the powers that be ever felt it to be necessary - or expedient). Breaking something to him in person would be the only reason to go to the trouble and expense of making a visit.

He did not expect Elisabeth's presence outside of his cell to herald good news, but it had been good news. The opportunity for the children to get out - out of a place where the conventional wisdom of the day insisted that everyone would be better off if one of the three of them did not exist - was something they had dreamed of and talked about in the wistful but detached tones of those who considered something a pleasant passing thought as opposed to anything even remotely approaching a practical reality.

It was real now. They were going.

The hesitant hitch in Elisabeth's voice that told him she would waver and second guess herself if he voiced an objection was no more than a registered observation on his part. It did not occur to him that there was anything to tell her other than to take the kids and go. He still (looking back) would never tell her anything other than to take the kids and go. That didn't mean that the reality of it all hadn't settled on him as he sat in his cell later that night.

They were going. He was staying. They could never come back. He could never follow.

There was no more reason to count the days. There was no more reason to keep track of time. All of the things for which he was counting were gone - and he couldn't help but be happy for that even in the face of the malaise that bogged down his now counting free days. He was never going to be helper, protector, care giver again. He couldn't begrudge that (given the circumstances), but he wasn't sure who he was in the face of that knowledge. He wasn't sure that he cared enough for the not knowing to actually bother him.

Days drifted. Time slipped away from him. He went through the motions, but he didn't really want to know when he was. He didn't want to notice the holidays he would never be a part of or the birthdays that he would never share. He didn't care to know how close he was to the day when he would have to walk out of the prison with its rules and schedules that structured his days into an unending blur and find himself with no one to come home to and nowhere to go with too much time to notice what he was never going to have.

So, he didn't think about it. He didn't count. He didn't plan. He just let himself drift.

He knows he is getting close to his release date when there is suddenly paperwork included in his days (bureaucracy persists through all times and all things). He follows directions when he is given a physical. They tell him that it is for job applications when he is released even though he never asks why. He has known all along that he would never be able to go back to being a cop, but the thought of job applications just cements that knowledge as one more piece of his life that is lost to him.

They have him change clothes, sign an acknowledgement of returned personal property, and cash out his commissary balance from the years of work he completed in order to fill his days with anything other than nothing. They tell him he will be met shortly in the waiting room where they leave him staring out a window at the same skyline from a different angle that he had been staring at for years. He just stands still.

He didn't ask them about the person that is supposed to meet him. Employment counselor, transition supervisor, some officer of the court - it doesn't really matter. He doesn't turn his head when he hears the door on the opposite side of the room from which he had entered open. He is sure his attention will be demanded whenever they are ready.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Her eighteenth birthday starts out as a pretty awesome day.

She has been on her own for nearly two years. On her own while she attends school, however, doesn't grant her any rights to contact her father. He is barred from contact with minors and that includes his own daughter even if she is his official next of kin. They will notify her if he dies in prison, but they won't let him send her mail (or vice versa). She can't discern any logic in those rules, but she didn't get to have a say. She can track the progress of his sentence via public records, but she will not receive any general correspondence about his release date or how to go about being there when it happens until she is actually of age. Her birthday marks the day that occurs, and she sends an inquiry message off before she goes to meet Audra (despite suspecting that there won't even be anyone in the appropriate office to see it and send her a reply yet).

She shares cafeteria sludge with Audra at a completely unreasonable hour of the morning and laughs at the woman's lighter fare emergency room stories. She hasn't been laughing much as she frets over her impending official adulthood - there have been too many plans that she has been trying to make with too many variables for her to adequately calculate. She's going to start getting those answers now, and it makes everything about the situation feel lighter now that she knows she will be able to start filling in the blanks. Audra just smiles at the excitedly frazzled state that Maddy is in throughout their "birthday breakfast." She can't help but be a little on the bouncy side. She can finally talk to her dad. The public record searches tell her that his final review before release is supposed to take place in just a few days; she just needs confirmation (and details).

She slips up to the children's ward for a few minutes and walks out with a card full of their handprints. She doesn't even pretend that she isn't teary all the way back to the apartment where she leaves it for safe keeping and grabs the things she needs for her classes. Kara has managed an honest to goodness potted plant for her (and her teary eyes get no closer to clearing). Maddy knows better than to say anything about the cost. She will only say thank you when they are next in the apartment at the same time. She and Kara have a deal about that - they both have their ways and their sources for access to a variety of things (jobs in interesting places and professors that they help with research projects assist with that). They don't ask questions. They just enjoy nice things when they come.

She thinks that she is hearing back from the prison when she gets the message on her plex as she makes her way between her second and third class of the day. She is confused when it is a notification that she needs to pick up a certified letter. She runs her schedule through her head, decides she has just enough time to make it between her third class and the late afternoon lab that she has that day, and spends the moments when she isn't taking notes for the next hour trying to figure out what she could possibly be receiving via certified mail. Real paper mail isn't completely obsolete, but it also isn't used on a regular basis by most people. (She's read books about the days when there was enough mail that they used to send people out to deliver it to you, but it's been decades since that was an actual practice.)

She's telling herself that the prison knows her vital statistics and may have arranged to send her the pertinent information she needs now that she can have it, but that type of efficiency doesn't mesh with what she knows of governmental bureaucracy (it was eight terrifying weeks before all of the paperwork finished allowing them to have Zoe back). The curiosity is kind of eating her alive by the time she arrives at the post office. Only the fact that Maddy Shannon absolutely and without question does not miss class (and the fact that she is too stunned to do anything other than follow the motions of her routine) keeps her moving enough to sink into her seat in the lab just as the class is starting.

The certified letter is from her mother. It's a warning that her dad doesn't know that she is still here. She doesn't know what to do with that information. She finishes her lab, completes her time at the tutoring station, and slips into the apartment with just enough time to reread the letter for the seventh time before Kara walks in with a smile and a round of "Happy Birthday!" She thanks her for the plant and reads the letter in her hands again. It still says the same thing. Her mother didn't tell her dad that she was staying behind. She has to be the one to explain that to him.

She doesn't talk to Kara about how she feels about that. In all honesty, she just doesn't know how she feels about it. Also, there are a few subjects that she and Kara do not cover. Maddy doesn't talk about what it is like to have one parent incarcerated and another in a different dimension; Kara doesn't talk about what it is like to have her parents move to one of the domes the instant they had finished helping her move her stuff in with Maddy.

"That's always been the plan," she had told her with a shrug - the topic had never been revisited.

Kara's family had lived in a house rather than an apartment the way Maddy's always had. (Josh had been a literal member of a "garage band" rather than just the pretense of the words the way they were usually used.) It hadn't really occurred to Maddy that someone who had an actual house might still be looking to "upgrade" their living arrangements. Domes always have waiting lists, but some of them have stricter requirements than others. The one where Kara's parents now live has a no children policy and does not allow nonresidents to visit inside their jurisdiction - not even family. It's weird to Maddy, but that's hardly the only thing she finds odd about the world as a whole. If Kara doesn't want to talk about it, then Maddy won't ask.

The thought occurs to her from time to time that she and Kara are both orphans without being orphans, but she shakes it off quickly each time it intrudes. She is not an orphan. She has a mother who will be waiting someday when she makes her way to her, and she has a father who will be coming home to her in just a matter of days - a father, it would seem, that has no idea that she will be there waiting for him.

She tells herself that she is the official next of kin and no longer a minor. She can write him a letter now. It's four days (officially, the reply to her message from the morning finally coming through while she was in her lab and so occupied with staring at her letter in between steps - it's a wonder that she didn't ruin anything with her level of distraction) until she is picking her dad up and she could offer him some warning as to what he will be finding. She sits down to draft a letter after Kara has gone to bed but finds that her thoughts are so jumbled that she can't manage to make any sense even to herself when she reads it back (and if anyone ought to be able to figure out what it is that she is writing, it should be the person writing it). It's hard to decide what to say and how to go about starting to say it.

"Hey, Dad! Guess what? I'm not where you thought I was. Surprise!"

She has a lot of words at her disposal, but that does not mean that she is always capable of choosing good ones. Then, she starts thinking. By the time she mails this letter over which she is agonizing and it makes its way through the screening process, will he even get it in time? She's pretty certain there is a solid chance that he won't. She stops writing, curls up on her side, and tries to go to sleep, but sleep isn't coming.

Her birthday started early and ended late, but none of the things that were supposed to be simpler after the date had passed have gotten simpler.

The next day she checks public transit schedules and sends another message to the prison. They assure her that the process of processing someone out isn't one that moves quickly. They tell her that it will be at least three hours after the administrative offices open that day before her dad will make his way to the lounge where those coming to meet the newly released wait. They stress that it is more likely to be four and may be as long as five.

She arranges her schedule to be as accommodating as she can make it, and forces herself not to completely abandon her Saturday morning tutoring hours. She can still work part of her usual shift (she's going to be taking care of another person while her dad gets his bearings, she kind of needs to work whatever she can) rather than pace back and forth in a waiting room for hours.

When she does arrive and finally makes it through her own check in process, they tell her that he has already been in the waiting room for about ten minutes. She rushes down the hall but pauses to take a deep breath before entering. She breathes in and out while telling herself that it is all going to be okay. She and her dad are about to be back together. It's the first step in getting them all back together. The fact that he doesn't know she is coming is a small detail that will be rectified momentarily. She doesn't know what she is going to say, but she isn't so sure that she is going to need to say anything at first. There should be hugging and maybe some crying - explanations can come later. She nods to the person at the desk to the side and hears the click of a lock disengaging. She pushes the door open and steps across the threshold while telling herself that she just needs to remember to breathe.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

When Maddy looks back on those early days later, she will know that awkward is really the only proper descriptive word for pretty much everything.

It's awkward to tell your father that your mother withheld information from him. That awkward, stumbling (and not completely succinctly or coherently well explained) revelation is followed in quick succession by a look of disbelief (which she kind of gets), a hurt expression that she has never before seen on her father's face (which she kind of gets), and a detached, guarded look like he is bracing himself (which she kind of gets despite the fact that she doesn't want to).

It's awkward to sort out living arrangements. She and Kara have routines and understandings. They always knew that the introduction of another person would shake that up - but knowing it and living it are two different things. Kara is part of her family now, but she is just a vaguely remembered girl that Josh used to be in a band with for her dad. Her dad is her dad, but he is an unrelated adult male she only sort of kind of knows for Kara. There was no way that that transition was not going to have bumps along the way, and Maddy feels like the determination that she and Kara have to make it work combined with her dad's general confusion at the unexpected situation in which he finds himself all sort of snowball on each other at times into something that she can't always determine the best method for handling.

It's awkward to have to talk to your dad about bills and how they are going to get paid. She tries to push those conversations off as much as she can, but the truth is that she and Kara have been making these living arrangements work without the luxury of them ever being comfortably off enough to not have to keep a close eye on the details. Things have never been bad, but there has never been any room for careless. Trying to stretch things out while her dad gets settled is something that she wants for him, but she doesn't have a whole lot of breathing room to use to make it happen. He has meetings pretty quickly with the post release transition people, but she can tell that he is still thrown by the way things have worked out for them. He didn't expect her to be a part of the situation, and she can see that it hurts him to be running up against what must feel like a steady stream of brick walls when all he wants to do is slip back into the role of the responsible one in charge now that he has come to grips with the fact that she is there.

It's awkward to feel like you have lost a role that you always played (without thought) and to find yourself unable to slip back into it. She has gotten out of the habit of being a daughter in her house and all of the little habits and details that come with that - the ones that her dad looks at her askance about when she doesn't automatically fall in with them any longer.

Awkward will always be the proper descriptive word, but what Maddy will always cling to about those days is how happy she was in spite of (or maybe due to) the awkwardness.

She has her dad back! He is here with her in the little hole in the wall apartment that she and Kara have worked so hard to make into a place that feels like a home. He is with her. She can talk to him and ask him questions. She can tell him about her day and share cute stories from the really good moments of working with the children at the hospital. She can listen to him and laugh sometimes (on the days that he actually seems together enough to tell the corny jokes he used to crack over the top of her little sister's head while her brother rolled his eyes in the background). The two of them can be together; the two of them are together.

Beyond simply having him back with her, his presence is an affirmation.

All of her plans weren't drivel. They weren't merely dreams. They weren't a coping mechanism destined to let her down (just because she has brushed aside all of the whispered and not so whispered words sent in her general direction over the last couple of years doesn't mean that she hasn't heard them).

She has a home with her dad, and that is just one of the steps on the trail of plans that she has made. It is, nevertheless, a step - a completed one. It is a dream of someday that has come to be. It is a piece of the puzzle that she knows inspired doubt in others that has overcome the odds (the occasional bouts of coughing and the way he tires out so easily are simple things with which to deal in light of the oft mentioned to her alternative of how many don't survive the health issues that often manifest after a few years in that level of security prison).

He made it.

She's made it this far.

They will keep making it together.

She is head turningly, light headed giddy, throw your arms out to your sides and spin until you collapse from being dizzy level happy, and she does nothing to attempt to mitigate how it shows (even when she notices the way her dad watches her from the corner of his eyes sometimes as if he can't quite understand what he is seeing). She is enjoying the joy of knowing that her plans are working.

She'll explain the next steps to him after he is acclimated to the surprises already thrown at him. Then, she is sure, he will be as happy as she is to know that the time is getting closer with every little piece snapping into place of them all being together again.

She will always know that the proper word was awkward; she will always know that what she was feeling over and above it all was joy.

All of that, however, will not come until later.

In the moments after she pushes her way into the waiting area, none of those after feelings are present. She is too busy telling herself that this is real to bother singling out for identification any of her emotional content. Her dad is right there - staring out a window with his back to the room completely unaware that she is there to take him back to their new version of home.

He's real. The moment is real. All she has to do is talk and they will be in the reality of it all together. The only problem is that she can't seem to do it. It's like being back in that hospital bed again with a throat that doesn't want to let the words escape her - only this time the only thing that is choking her are her own unnamed emotions.

"Dad?" She croaks out and wonders if the word is even recognizable to its intended recipient with all of the weight that she has managed to hang on it. She knows that he hears something because his shoulders tense for a moment before his chin sinks against his chest and his forehead comes to rest against the window.

She swallows, takes a step closer, and tries again. The word is louder that time, but it is also, more importantly, surer.

He turns around slowly - so slowly that she isn't certain that her eyes aren't just imaging the movement at first. He is facing her with glazed eyes that are becoming less cloudy by the moment.

"Maddy?" The word sounds strange (coming as it does in a voice that sounds so similar to her memories yet so different with the tinge of disuse that is tainting it).

She smiles at him and nods her head even as her vision goes rather blurry from the tears that are insisting on welling up in her eyes. She doesn't really register what she is doing until she has already made a rushing motion that may have been a run or even a leap and has her arms wrapped around him while she sniffles. There is the slightest of pauses - just long enough to realize that she hasn't explained anything (and a moment longer to realize that she doesn't care because explanations can come later because hugging needs to be now) - before she feels him wrap his arms around her in return.

Everything else - the emotions and the talking and the bumps in the road - will come soon enough. None of them matter in that moment. All that matters is that she settles in closer and breathes in the familiarity of the comfort of having her dad.

* * *

AN: Maddy and Jim reunited marks the end of this story's second arc. It will be about a month before the next section starts posting.


	13. Bonus

AN: This is a bonus chapter; it takes place outside of the chronological order of the other chapters.

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy was in the middle of a sentence when Audra slid a plex across the table and looked at her expectantly. She made the assumption, based on that look, that she was supposed to be viewing whatever it was that was featured on the screen. She had to operate with an assumption because Audra had never done anything like that before. They had always talked at their meetings in the hospital cafeteria - Audra had never brought anything to show her. She actually couldn't recall Audra ever carrying around a plex with her during any time other than when she was doing patient rounds.

"What is this?" She asked purely from reflex even as she was turning the device around in front of her.

"Read it first," Audra told her. "Ask questions later."

"This is a patient case file," Maddy said (even though it was really a question in disguise) as soon as the words at the top of the screen registered.

"Questions later," Audra repeated in a tone usually reserved for patients that were being particularly recalcitrant. Maddy felt her eyebrows rise in response, but she looked down to comply without further comment.

Maddy scanned the information on the screen - scrolling and committing the high points to memory. She looked back up only to find Audra was shaking her head.

"Read it - not treat it like a test prep outline." There was something in Audra's voice that Maddy would need to take time to figure out and digest later. In the meantime, she opened her mouth to ask a question, then thought better of the impulse and settled back into her chair so she could prop the screen at a more comfortable angle.

It was a Jane Doe file for a child of indeterminate age - prepubescent with malnutrition issues. They placed the range at nine to eleven. She had current severely compromised lung function over top of scarring from a previously treated round of lung disease. No records of previous treatment could be located and no record of the child's identity could be found.

Maddy felt herself double blinking as that sentence finally registered in her thoughts, but the words remained the same. The only children who did not have an electronic trail were children like Zoe back when their family had been keeping her hidden. Her mind was throwing around possibilities almost more quickly than she could keep them separate. If she was a third child, then what had happened to the family that had been hiding her?

The rest of the details implied an altogether sketchy situation - she had been found in an apartment when the building manager had come to clean the place before the arrival of new tenants. Interviewed neighbors said that there used to be several persons that came in and out of the apartment at regular intervals. They had assumed that the home was shared by roommates with differing work shifts - none of them social. No one claimed to have ever noticed a child going in or out.

There had been a month to month rental agreement maintained for a few years (and paid in cash) in a name that turned out to be fictitious. The month had not been renewed (and no one had seen any comings and goings for a week and a half) when the building manager had stumbled across the girl. She had heard him say that he was calling the police and bolted. They had found her on the streets nearly thirty hours later (and identified her as the original girl based on the building manager's description and security footage of a store a block down that had caught her frantically running at the time of the original report). After nearly a day and a half of completely unfiltered air, she wasn't in any condition to run again when they caught up with her (and had hacked up more blood than anyone was comfortable with all over the officer that had responded to the report of an unattended child sleeping in an alley).

It wasn't a pretty story, but that didn't tell Maddy why Audra was bringing it to her attention. She looked up at the other woman expectantly.

"I've talked to the nurses up there," Audra told her stirring the contents of her cup in a distracted manner that she had never before seen exhibited. "Nothing's helping. She won't talk; she barely eats. She shuts down any time an adult walks into the room."

"My schedule . . .," Maddy started even as she ran through her mental calendar.

"Is so beyond crazy that what's one more thing at this point?" Audra said in a voice that told her she was only half joking. "I know you're busy." She made a scoffing noise. "I'm usually the one telling you that busy doesn't even begin to cover it." She shook her head slowly back and forth as if she could not decide whether or not she approved of what she was asking.

"This is a teaching hospital, Maddy," she finally settled on saying. "That girl in there is an old world gold mine for a place like this. They can have students from a half a dozen departments working around and about her, but do you know what the problem is with that?"

"It leaves nobody working with her or for her."

"Got it in one. So, what are you going to do about it?"

What else could she do about it?

She rearranged her schedule (which essentially meant that she gave up a little bit more sleeping a couple of days a week because that was really the only part of her schedule that still had any space for her to wiggle around). She did the proper channel paperwork to be officially assigned as a psychology intern (because the little girl was a ward of the state and therefore off limits to standard volunteers).

She started visiting. She kept visiting - for weeks.

So many visits had felt as if they had nothing to show for them. Sometimes, Maddy brought games which the little girl just looked at at first before finally latching on to the deck of cards and sending challenging glares at anyone that she seemed to suspect might be inclined to take them away. Sometimes, Maddy let there be silence. Sometimes, she did the talking herself. The girl never objected, but she never seemed to engage either.

On most days, Maddy didn't know why she kept going. She was obviously not helping. She wasn't making progress. She almost didn't blame the girl for not wanting to answer questions or interact with anyone - she was watched and prodded and questioned and talked at instead of to all day long every day. It would be enough to make anyone disgruntled under the best of circumstances. These were hardly that.

Sometimes, Maddy took a few minutes to sit on one of the landings of the stairway (which hardly anyone ever used - guaranteeing her a small bit of privacy) and took deep breaths while willing herself to not be reduced to tears over how much it hurt her heart to see someone so small so shut off and determined to stay that way. Then, she would gather herself up, keep going, and come back again the next time.

It was the second time that it happened that Maddy noticed the change. It was one of the days where she was filling the silence with whatever it occurred to her to talk about. She had said something about her mother being in Terra Nova. The little girl's eyes had shifted toward her before darting away again. It was a little thing, but it set Maddy to thinking. She was almost positive that the same thing had occurred the last time that she had told her a similar story. She filed the information away and tested it on her next visit in the least obvious way she could manage (which, she could admit, was likely still pretty obvious). She was so excited to get any sort of a reaction at all that she rushed the one sided conversation in a manner that would have been blatantly obvious to anyone that was paying attention. Since she wasn't sure that the little girl propped up in the bed ever really paid any attention to her, she wasn't certain that that mattered. The reaction was what mattered.

The eye shift happened again.

Maddy pulled her chair a little closer and leaned in as if she was going to whisper a secret.

"Someday," she told her, "I'm going to go there and be with my mother again."

The little eyes shifted back to her, and they stayed on her. Maddy could almost see wheels turning behind those eyes and almost squealed in excitement at the first sure sign of anything but blankness or distrust that she had seen. (She didn't, of course, because it would have ruined the moment, but she let the squealing in her head go on unabated even as she watched carefully.)

She wasn't sure what to do next. She didn't want to interrupt the girl's thought process, but she felt like whatever it was that was connecting with her was not yet quite enough. She didn't want to push too hard, but she also didn't want to lose the momentum.

"I'm not sure when," she finally decided to say still leaned in like they were sharing secrets, "but it'll happen someday."

The little girl's eyes settled into an emotion that Maddy could only describe as pity. She reached out a hand and patted Maddy's arm in a sympathetic manner. She shook her head before slowly getting out words that were scratchy and harsh with disuse and a damaged throat. "They lie."

That was all - there were no more words; there was no more eye contact. The girl rolled to her side with her back to Maddy and seemed to sink further in on herself. Nothing that Maddy said or tried pulled a response back out of her, and she didn't try for long. She sensed that she needed some time and nothing that Maddy did would be welcome at the moment.

Maddy spent three days in a swirl of thoughts that she couldn't bring to any satisfactory conclusions. There were very few things that she knew for certain. There were a lot of things that she could guess. The medical files (and the statements of the neighbors) indicated that the girl had likely been on her own for a bit of time before she had been brought to the attention of social services. However, her previous medical treatment for her lung issues had been adequate, and she had obviously been kept in an environment that prevented contamination and relapse for a significant period of time before her current exposure issues. Everything about the story that the files told indicated abandonment.

The mention of a mother being in Terra Nova obviously drew the girl's attention, and Maddy may have used her plex in what might have been considered a slightly inappropriate manner to find profiles of all those who had transferred to the project in order to look for any potential possibilities. There were very few families (she found after writing a basic sorting program that pulled criteria matches for her on demand) that had made the trip with two children in tow. In fact, she could only find three. Since she could (obviously) rule out her own mother, she was left with two possibilities - neither of which seemed likely.

Mysteries were for solving, but Maddy needed more information to solve this one. That information, though, was only going to come from the little girl that had retreated back into not talking.

She visited. She kept visiting - for days this time.

The little girl would play a game with her on occasion, but she never said anything. Mostly, she stayed blank if anyone else was ever around and snuck those pitying looks in Maddy's direction from time to time if it was just them.

"It would be nice if I had something to call you other than little girl," Maddy commented one day when she was so caught up in her thoughts that she forgot to use her verbal filter (which happened to her more often that she liked to consider). This time, however, it seemed to work in her favor.

The little girl tilted her head to the side as if pondering a thought that had never before occurred to her.

"Sienna," she said before going back to the game of solitaire that she had been playing the entire time that Maddy was talking.

It wasn't much. Maddy knew that she was on a finite time schedule; the little girl, Sienna, was getting closer every day to being well enough to release to a state home (and no one could say for certain where they would send her). It was, however, a start.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Dillon Moore was an unexpected turn of events.

Maddy had planned on there being job offers. They were sort of integral to her long term goals (plus, there were the short term purchase of necessities issues that existed until the long term goal was reached to consider). She had planned on being scouted when the time came. It wasn't arrogance on her part (no matter how it might sound if she had ever bothered to try to put it into words for other people). It was simply the case that she had worked hard to make herself an attractive prospect to a variety of interests. She had predicted (and planned for) having options. She had thought that sorting through those options and figuring out which combination of choices would be the best route for getting from point A to point B was going to be a painstaking process (likely riddled with much second guessing and no little amount of stress).

She had expected that she would need to weigh and choose carefully and maybe try to work out something where she could take more than one position on a part time basis so that she could keep her options open and her relevance to multiple fields germane. She could not afford to get pigeon holed. She wanted to be multifaceted so that Terra Nova would come calling. She had not expected someone that was not Terra Nova to want her for the same reasons. She had not expected anyone to make her an offer that would allow her to wrap her multiple fields into one.

Dillon Moore was an interesting man - possibly even more interesting because Maddy had not recognized the name when he first made his business intentions known to her. She had had to look him up and had been surprised to find just how easy it was to find a multitude of articles when she did. She was used to having at least a flicker of recognition any time a science field related name was mentioned in her presence. Somehow, he had never come to the forefront in all of her science digging.

He was considered a "dabbler" in multiple scientific areas but was more commonly known for his legal work. She could understand why Moore and Associates had never been on her radar (as law had never been on her list of possibles), but the fact that she had missed the fact that it quietly funded several "think tanks" in a variety of scientific fields sent her into a research spiral that left her not sleeping for four days until Kara had stolen her plex and her father had picked her up and carried her to her "section" of the apartment. The "Go. To. Bed." that had been spoken with a look so reminiscent of her late childhood had nearly made her cry. (She was always strangely emotional when little things like that happened that reminded her that her dad was there and still her dad even though he seemed to get a little lost in how they related to each other and the sadness of missing the rest of the members of their family at times.)

After she was sleeping as properly as she ever did again, it became obvious to Maddy very quickly that Mr. Moore was a man who liked to have his fingers in a wide variety of things while still managing to not draw overt attention for it. He was just sort of everywhere in a manner that made him unnoticeable in any one area. She wasn't sure how he had managed, but she thought it might be an intriguing intellectual exercise to attempt to figure it out (in a different world where she had time to devote to such things outside of general pondering as she tried to fall asleep).

He was like her and unlike her all at the same time, and Maddy thought that she might be happy working under his direction - as long as she could avoid the out in the open anonymity that clung to him. She wanted to be involved in a little bit of everything, but she wanted the right people to know that she could do all of those things. In another set of circumstances, Dillon Moore's kind of working would have been something to which she aspired. In her set of circumstances, she needed to be noticed. She needed a certain level of spotlight. She needed people to want to call her when they needed something completed or figured. Her family's future reunification was dependent on her being known. She wasn't sure that she could take the risk - no matter how attractive the offer in general might be.

Looking into the man's professional dealings in his law practice only made her more conflicted. Members of his firm traveled around the country taking "third child" cases pro bono. She was torn between respect and appreciation and wondering how her family had missed out on that.

Mr. Moore (he stated that he appreciated the nod to introductory manners but would feel much better about their future working together when she learned to call him Dillon) made his official job offer in person. He had contacted her via electronic means to give her a rough outline of the details and again a few days later to schedule an appointment - one to be held at her choice of place and her time of choosing. That was completely unexpected. He said that he was the one making a request, so the meeting should take place on her terms. If the man was willing to travel several hundred miles to meet with her, then she thought it would be inappropriate to turn down the meeting (even though she suspected that he was the sort of person that it would be hard to say no to face to face and she did not yet know whether saying yes was something that she could do). She would hear him out, but she would remain objectively focused on the plan.

She picked the hospital cafeteria. She even knew that it was an odd choice when she made it, but she couldn't think of anywhere else that felt like it was meeting on "her terms." She wasn't about to invite the stranger (interesting or not) to her home, and the hospital cafeteria was really the only sit down place to which she ever went. Besides, the thought of Audra lurking in the background keeping an eye on things seemed comforting. She wasn't going to tell her dad about the interview until it was already over (and if it wasn't an interview that actually led to a job, then likely not at all). His need to protect her manifested itself in odd ways at times, and she was fairly certain that a parent showing up to grill an interviewer was not a done thing.

Mr. Moore was what one of the classic stories she had enjoyed back when she had had the time for it would have described as "silver haired and distinguished looking." She gave him credit for looking completely at ease (more at ease than she was feeling certainly) in the slightly dingy walled, harshly lighted space at the well-worn chair pulled up to the scratched and dented table. He noticed her arrival before she even had time to take a breath and get her bearings and gestured her over with a smile that looked designed to put people at ease with the sincere way that it melted into the laugh lines on his face.

The conversation was good - really good considering Maddy's tendency to trip into information overshare. It never seemed to continue out of control in the manner that is usually did once she got going (Mr. Moore seemed to follow the twists she was taking rather well and always had a comment or a question that pulled things back on track). She was kind of hating that it was going so well even while enjoying the variety of topics they were covering (it felt more like an interest survey of areas that she was capable of working than an actual interview in a lot of ways). She wanted to be a part of developing the things that he was casually throwing around as if everyone thought about doing such things every day. She wanted to work in a place that thought about such things in the context of "why not tackle that." It all sounded wonderful, but she kept telling herself that she (who had made a habit of being a science fan girl for nearly as long as she had been able to read) had never even heard of the people and place behind all of it.

She felt obligated to offer him an explanation as the conversation progressed. This was one of those times where it felt as though a no with no details (although she knew it would likely be easier on herself to do so) would be inappropriate. She had a couple of false starts before she managed to interject something along the lines of needing to explain her family. It wasn't a false start like the previous two attempts, but it didn't lead to her saying what she wanted to get said either.

"I know all about your family, Madelyn Shannon," Mr. Moore told her. "I don't come recruiting lightly just as I imagine you don't entertain the prospect of accepting employment lightly. I know that you are the second of three children. We happen to share that middle child status. I, myself, am the third of five children. The current laws, of course, were not in place at that time. I find, however, that I have difficulty not resenting both people and policies that tell me that I should not exist." He made eye contact with her and held it for a long moment before continuing. "I imagine you and I might also have a similar desire to rectify what we see as wrongs created by those same people and policies. I know that part of your family is in Terra Nova while you and your father remain here. I imagine that there has been some thought of making yourself attractive to recruitment officials for the project. I understand that recognition of work is essential to the process. If I may be so crude as to name drop for a moment . . .," he paused until she realized that she should nod in response. He proceeded to rattle off a trio of names with which she was very familiar and informing her that just because he preferred to handle his business dealings in a certain manner did not mean that accommodations could not be made for those who were not similarly inclined.

"I want you to work for me," he informed her with a somewhat regal incline of his head, "for as long as you may be available to do so. I, however, want whatever decision you make to be a well thought out and reasoned one. I've been told that I tend to sway people with my words - occupational benefit and hazard by turn. I will not accept any answer from you on the subject until exactly 72 hours from now. In the meantime, I suggest you invite your friend that has been keeping a watchful eye on me since I entered to join us for lunch - which I am certain will be an interesting experience," he concluded with an amused glance in the direction of the menu board.

Audra was enticed to join them, and the conversation over lunch was as varied as it was entertaining (with job offers and work related items never once being mentioned).

At the end of the three days, Maddy had a short conversation with Dillon before announcing to her father and Kara that she would be going to work for Mr. Moore.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Madelyn Shannon did not simply work in her accepted position; she thrived there.

She explored. She created. She learned.

It was kind of wonderful.

She had never completely stopped enjoying figuring things out and knowing things simply for the sake of figuring things out and knowing things, but she could look back and see that her focus had shifted the way she reacted to everything around her for a sizable chunk of time. The children at the hospital had felt like the only concession she had made to wanting something beyond just making sure she was continuing down the path that led to the rest of her family. She had had Kara and Audra (and her dad later on), but there had been a part of her that was so goal orientated that she had lost sight of a lot of things in the face of the goal.

She liked to think that she learned a better balance in those early days of working for Dillon.

She was still focused on the goal. She would always be focused on the goal, but she learned that she had to be okay with the life she was living on the way to getting there. There were times that she had felt vaguely guilty for the nights that she had spent talking to Kara (and giving herself a badly needed mental health break) instead of adding flourishes to another project or a little more studying in one area or another. The moments had crept up on her when a little voice whispered that she was being disloyal by enjoying quiet times in the hospital cafeteria chatting with Audra when her father had been locked up with no one to visit him. Every time she had gone to class or to work or to volunteer in those early days after his release when he sometimes looked at her like he thought she was going to vanish without a trace if she walked out the door had popped up in the swirls of self-doubt that tried to pull her under from time to time.

She had been sitting in the middle of a lab with scribbled overlay notes covering the reference materials pulled up on three different plex screens around her one day when what the necessary, missing element from a chemistry situation she was trying to resolve had suddenly become clear to her and she found herself laughing while spinning herself around and around in the wheeled, spinning chair that followed her from space to space around the building (because Dillon was a great boss who didn't care if you thought possession of a spinning chair was necessary to your continued creativity).

She had pulled up short mid spin and mid laugh when the clock caught her eye and she realized that it had just ticked past midnight making it officially Zoe's birthday. She felt a sudden flash of anger at herself for sitting there reveling over some silly, insignificant progress as if she wasn't still ages away from seeing her little sister again (as if she was being disloyal by having a moment that wasn't governed by regret that she wasn't with her family or, at least, inconsiderate by not making sure that being with her dad had been her first thought on the occasion).

As suddenly as the flash of anger had come, she had found her logical brain processing how she would feel if she knew that Zoe and Josh and their mother were sitting somewhere in Terra Nova just marking time because they weren't together at the moment. She didn't like the heavy feeling in her chest (too close to memories of restricted breathing) that accompanied the thought.

She didn't want them to just stop. She couldn't stand the way that her dad looked sometimes as if he had just paused somewhere outside of her reach as if he wasn't sure that it was okay for him to keep going without things being the way that they used to be. She didn't want that - not for any of them.

That felt too much like mourning, and none of them needed to be in mourning. They were going to be together again. It was just a matter of time. None of them were on pause in the meantime. They were all still living. She wanted them all to still be living and behaving as if that was what they were doing. That would just mean that many more stories they would have to share when they were all together again.

She went home to their little apartment that night and hugged her dad who was sitting in the dark looking at one of the pictures that she had saved to her plex that featured a laughing Zoe being held upside down by a smiling Josh looking like he was threatening to drop her on her head. She started talking, and he started talking in return. They traded stories for hours, and they both smiled through them until Maddy crashed for a couple of hours (because her affinity for her new job had done nothing to improve her poor sleeping habits).

She spent an evening a couple of days later sitting with Kara and listening to some recordings she had of Josh playing his guitar. They talked about how much emotion he put into his music. They rolled their eyes and traded quips about some of his annoying habits. They talked about him like he was someone who meant something to them - someone they were happy to know. They talked about him like he was someone they might miss but not like someone that they were regretting. It was nice, and they started making a point of repeating variations of the same activity from time to time.

Maddy wasn't exactly sure what it was that had shifted in her, but everything felt different. She had never not believed that she would make this work, but she thought that maybe what she was feeling now was certainty that she was on the correct path for getting there. It was okay for her to be happy thinking of her family. It was okay for her to be happy with what she was doing and the people she was with at the moment. She didn't need to be on pause. She wasn't on pause.

She even found she had enough peace of mind and calm about her to find teasing words for Audra after the second time she had run into Dillon at the hospital (because she kept time in her schedule for volunteering no matter how crazy her schedule might get), put two and two together, and recognized what was happening there (the man didn't even live in their city and he certainly wasn't waiting around the hospital for a chance at seeing her).

She could have a goal. She could have a plan. She could be working to bring it closer to fruition every day, but that did not mean that she couldn't also like the life that she was living.

She could; she did.

By 22, she was working in her third year under Dillon's (admittedly rather loose) direction. She had five published articles in various scientific journals to her credit, had been requested by name by three different clients who thought a blend of two or more of her fields would be helpful for their particular difficulties, and held two patents in her own name.

She was never going to be a name that random people on the street recognized (that had never been on her list of wants), but she was beginning to be a name that the right people in the right circles were noting. It was only a matter of time until the people she most wanted doing that noting came calling.

She had just come back from a six week on site stay working on a project at one of Dillon's quietly sponsored agricultural research domes when it happened. It had been the first and only time that her work had required her to travel. It had been a little weird, but it had also been the dome where Kara lived and worked. She had stayed with her, and the two of them had actually coordinated the project together - that had made it a lot like replaying a couple of ag/chemistry crossover projects they had worked on in college on a much grander scale. She had enjoyed spending time with Kara again as much as she had enjoyed the challenge of the project.

She missed her best friends.

She didn't begrudge either of them the moves that had taken them out of her face to face reach. It had been a really great job offer for Kara coming straight off of graduation (partially as a result of one of those ag/chemistry crossover projects that the two of them had created). She also wasn't about to be sad that Audra had retired from nursing and left Chicago (she couldn't very well expect the woman to live in a different city from her new husband just for the sake of Maddy's convenience).

They talked a lot (Maddy even got fairly regular messages from Audra's adopted now teenage daughter that always made her smile to herself at how far she had come from the little girl that had spent weeks refusing to speak to her). It just wasn't quite the same.

She had been working on several little items with no definite timeline for completion when she left for the dome, and she came back into work that first day after a long weekend of getting settled back in and all caught up with her dad to find that several more had piled up in her absence.

She was alternating shifting through data for two of those items (because there were actual piles of real paper covering her desk that someone had been none too careful depositing there) when something about the numbers jumped out at her.


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy had always liked patterns.

One of her earliest memories involved the beads on a small imitation abacus (a hand me down toy that had survived a couple of generations with little to no use and wasn't really supposed to function as an abacus anyway). She could remember sitting in front of it and sliding the beads from side to side before something in her head clicked into place and she was spreading out the pieces to make designs and representations of pictures from her head on the bars in front of her.

She has no idea how long she sat there the first time that the uses for the beads suddenly made sense to her, but it felt like days that she pushed and shifted and smiled at the feeling it gave her to know that there was a regularity and a method to the process that she could control.

She had been obsessed with that toy. She could remember the first time that her dad had gotten up in the middle of the night because he heard the clicking as she shifted the beads back and forth in the dark on her bed. She hadn't needed the light at that point - she knew the colors and numbers by heart and could see the pictures she was making in her head as clearly as she could have if the lights had been on to guide her. The beads under her fingers were soothing.

She remembered that she had woken up from a dream that had scared her - she couldn't remember what it had been about; just that she had been afraid and had been sliding out of her bed to go climb in with her parents when her fingers had come to rest on the cool metal bars of the toy that she had been playing with before she had fallen asleep. It was automatic to start sliding them back and forth - she had been doing it so often when she was awake. Before she had known it, she had forgotten all about the dream, being scared, and wanting to cuddle with her parents. In her head, there had only been patterns and repetitions along with the way it all made her feel safer somehow.

She had actually been startled when her dad had asked her what she was doing - she had been that focused that she had lost track of any other sounds in their apartment. At first, her parents had chided and even tried to hide the toy from her. Eventually, her parents had gotten so used to the sound that they slept through it on the nights that she woke and found her hands reaching out for it (Josh had always slept through anything and everything back then).

She had outgrown the toy with its beads and the pictures that somehow only made sense to her, but patterns had been her refuge ever since. Math, chemistry, and even Josh's music were all soothing because of the patterns that they contained. Patterns had become (somewhere along the way) the method by which she coped with things that might otherwise overwhelm her (the way other people smoked or drank or did drugs was something that other people had snidely said to her on a couple of memorable occasions that she learned to ignore because her patterns didn't hurt herself and most definitely did not cause harm to any other people).

It should go without saying that Maddy knew patterns when she saw them.

She didn't even need to be particularly looking for them. She knew what she was seeing often before she knew that she was seeing something - the decoding just came so naturally to her. (That was a not insignificant part of what made things like math and chemistry come to her so easily.) Patterns just stood out from their surroundings as if they were inviting her to look at them more closely and see whatever it was that they were trying to show her. She, more often than not, took them up on that invitation. This was one of those times.

What she was seeing now was no different than any other pattern that she had explored. It made perfect sense (when she took the time to think it through and wonder why no one else seemed to have noticed yet).

The anomaly at Hope Plaza hadn't just opened in the middle of the street one day with casual passersby walking into it by accident. There had been indications that there was something odd going on for quite some time previous to the occurrence manifesting itself in the form that made it recognizable for what it was (and there had been work done on their end to turn it into the efficient method of transit that it had become).

There were three years of official reports of various natures that she could find all trending toward something out of the norm being reported to various authorities, but what she noticed was that the rumor mill which she could access from her plex contained tales that stretched back much further - much, much further. She could discern that several of them were the type of "I knew before anyone else" sort that cropped up with claims of foreknowledge after every sort of incident from earthquakes to a serial killer living across the road, but there were an equal number of items that seemed to validly date to even decades before anyone in any official capacity had suspected that there was something strange going on in the midst of Chicago.

It seemed logical to her that the simple fact that this glitch in the fabric of dimensions existed was proof that it was possible (as at a loss as they all still remained to explain it aside), so why not the same sort of thing somewhere else?

She knew that it was a chancy proposition. One could not assume that one dimensional rift would lead to the same place as another even if you found one, but now that she knew there was something to be looking for, why would she not? If ever there was an accomplishment that would guarantee her a Terra Nova spot to which she could dictate terms, then would it not be the discovery and proof of a method by which humanity could determine a means of finding like items that gave them more options? What reason could she have not to try?

She didn't tell anyone what she was doing in between and during her other projects (and what scant free time that she still had). It wasn't something that she felt like she could explain (or even that she should try until she was surer of what she was doing).

That didn't seem to stop Dillon from knowing. For a hands off type of background boss, he still seemed to have a solid knowledge of everything that was going on in each and every one of his funded ventures. She had barely finished following the trail of the patterns she was seeing to their logical conclusion when she received the offer to move. She was only a little bit surprised that he had caught on so quickly (she had been working in his vicinity enough to know that it was going to happen long before she had a solid presentation of her findings to make).


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy had a theory.

It wasn't really a theory in the scientific sense of the word - she had no means of testing it and no actual, fact ridden details with which to support it. What she really had was more of a hypothesis, but for purposes of blending with the common vernacular usage of the word - she had a theory. Her theory was that however it was that the portals came to be and whatever it was that caused them, they had one stable point in one dimension and a changing point in another dimension based within a certain range.

The anomaly in Chicago had only ever been in the same place from the moment it was "discovered." Hope Plaza had been constructed around it. It was not common knowledge that the Terra Nova side of the connected system did not anchor to a single spot on its own (it wasn't classified information, but it wasn't the type of thing that was thought to be of interest for people's every day little news snippets that were supposed to keep them interested and supportive of the project). People who studied the subject knew, but there did not seem to be much interest in deconstructing the whys of it all.

The portal gate on the other side anchored the entry point to one spot, but it was Maddy's personal theory (hypothesis, whichever you would prefer) that the gate itself was the reason that traffic was only one way. It was not the actual anomaly that only went in one direction - the limitations of their attempt to control the anomaly produced that side effect. Left to its own devices, the naturally occurring connection would deposit things and people when and where it chose to be open on the other side (hence the gap in time that had occurred between Commander Taylor's original entrance and the entrance of those who had come behind him - another piece of not so common knowledge).

Maddy posited that he had actually gone through when that side was resetting (and the person behind him had come through after it had closed). It had sent the others out in its new opening spot however many weeks later when it had finished resetting (which was an entire field of study to be tackled in and of itself). If nothing else, it was good to know that those inside the connection seemed to be unaffected (or at least unharmed) by the occurrence.

The Bermuda anomaly was the opposite of the Hope Plaza one in her opinion. She thought it likely that there was a fixed point on the Terra Nova side that connected to a resetting point on her side. All those stories of planes and ships disappearing in the area had been caused by those who had happened to run into the opening as it opened and closed and moved around within the confines of the triangle. If you could predict (or find a method of tracking the movements) where and when it was that it would be opening next, you should be able to send items through or go through yourself.

It was as sound a speculation on what was occurring (the two portals creating a loop between the two worlds) as any she had come across in her research, but she couldn't prove it - yet. It was lucky for her that Dillon Moore was the kind of guy who enjoyed knowledge for knowledge's sake, was willing to take chances on ideas that might not pan out, and had been successful enough with enough practical things to have the money to bankroll the type of testing that might never prove fruitful on the mere chance that it just might (or might turn up something useful or interesting during the process).

He also had an, at times, eerie way of dropping things in your lap that made you wonder just how close of an eye he was actually keeping on you. The memo she was looking at was one of those times.

It was direct and lacking in details (as all correspondence from Dillon tended to be). He liked to do his persuasion (when he felt that persuasion was necessary) in person. For a man that backed more technological ventures than she could count, he held an unshakable belief that one on one, in person contact was the standard via which contracts, negotiations, and business relationships should be built and conducted. She couldn't say that she had seen much in the way of evidence to prove him wrong. He certainly proved very capable of getting people to do what he wanted them to do (and even go where he wanted them to go).

He wanted her to move to Bermuda. Wanted but was not insisting. She knew this because the suggestion came in a memo and not with a visit. He obviously knew what she was working on and had at least a general idea of what she suspected. She actually hadn't even known that he backed a facility in that region (but that wasn't unusual).

Bermuda used to be a place that people went on vacations; she had seen the old videos. She had even gone looking and read some old brochures. The thing that had stuck out to her was the odd stories that people seemed to enjoy dismissing as much as they enjoyed telling. It was a strange sort of balance that had seemed to exist where people read and watched lots of pieces about disappearing ships and planes and whatnot while scoffing that there could actually be anything going on that they did not understand. She had devoured any and all of them that she could find, and they did nothing but further convince her that she was correct about what was happening.

She could have done calculations from a desk in any part of the world, but Dillon had his idiosyncrasies. He seemed to think that there were some things that were best seen in person; he thought it provided more proper motivation. Thus, his agricultural engineers never lived in far off domes doing calculations and sending them on to the field level operatives. They lived on site. They worked with the people implementing their solutions and had a front row seat to exactly how those solutions played out. She appreciated his management style for the most part but moving out of country had never been on her list of items to accomplish (in this dimension anyway). She could not argue, however, that it did not make sense.

Maddy had progressed from seeing "something" to having a working theory that she needed to explore further and for which she needed to gather evidence. Chicago included, she had discovered five places where a similar pattern jumped out at her. It was bothering her that there were only five - if her theory was correct, then even numbers should prevail. She was actually quite confident (all out of proportion to her ability to prove what she knew she was seeing) that the anomalies came in pairs.

The patterns between the places that she was studying were similar patterns, but the individual numbers were different. Two of them matched with two more because they were inverses of each other. The fifth one (the outlier as she referred to it in her head) must have an inverse somewhere, but she could only hazard a guess that it existed somewhere for which she did not have access to the relevant data.

The thought that she would need to move out of country may never have occurred to her in the course of all of her planning, but it seemed a better idea with each passing moment that she thought about it. Her plans had all involved official invitations from the Terra Nova project. If she was right (and she was sure that she was) and could figure out a way to make the necessary predictions (which she was optimistic about since patterns had never let her down before), then she would be in a situation where she had access to a means of travel to Terra Nova that would not require official sanctioning or approval for who was allowed to come.

It was a strange thought - a little unnerving even. She wasn't sure what all she was feeling, but she was sure that she was going to give Dillon's request a favorable response. She was going to be completely buried in trying to find a method of prediction (and some better methods for getting the necessary numbers that she would need in a timely manner in order to make those predictions). There were so many things involved that her head was spinning even while a part of her was practically humming in pleasure at the challenge of it all. She was going to make this work.

She just needed to talk to her dad (after she decided exactly how much she was actually going to tell him).


	18. Zoe

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Zoe drew pictures.

It was something that she could not remember ever not doing. She thinks that maybe it started when she was very small because it was a quiet activity (to this day she did not know how her family had managed to muffle the sound of a crying baby in their apartment for all the many months that they must have done so). She thinks that drawing was likely introduced early on in her toddlerhood as a means to keep her busy without catching any unwanted attention.

She remembers that she used to draw her pictures on the screen of Maddy's plex (often her attempts at portraying pieces of the stories her sister had told her), but they had lots of paper where they now lived. Josh brought it home for her along with pencils then crayons and later paint. Her mother had told her once that it was not the same kind of paper that Maddy had used when she sent letters to people back where they used to live. She couldn't really remember that paper anyway. She liked the kind she had now. She liked her crayons. She really liked her paints.

She liked making pictures that she could keep and show her mother or put in Josh's room or even hide if she wanted to keep them to herself. Sometimes, she drew pictures to help her not forget. She knew enough to know that she had a daddy that she could not really remember - just someone who felt big who used to rock her to sleep sometimes. She filled page after page with her best memories of her sister (some of what she looked like and some of things that she remembered that the two of them used to do together or just things that she remembered about how she had fiddled with things in their kitchen or with pieces of broken electronics). She was not going to let herself forget the details about Maddy in the same way that she knew she had forgotten the details about her father. She drew her pictures to help her remember. She didn't talk about it. She thought that Josh and their mother must have their own ways of making sure that they did not forget, but she never asked.

Zoe got older. Memories from before they came to Terra Nova got fuzzier, but her pictures only gained more clarity.

She was not trying to drive Josh crazy with her habits. In point of fact, she was trying to help out everyone's sanity by giving them all a little bit of breathing room. Josh had a tendency to hover. Zoe had a tendency to nearly bite her tongue in half trying not to say mean things to him when she was out of patience with it. She did not mind that Josh wanted to take care of her. She just minded sometimes that Josh still seemed to think of her like the long ago left behind population control officers might still be lurking somewhere waiting for a chance to snatch her. She wasn't the sister that was gone. She wasn't going to be going anywhere (at least not permanently). She just needed some space sometimes.

She needed her sketching time (and she did not want anyone hanging over her shoulder while she was having it). She had started slipping off to draw away from everyone else as soon as she figured out that she could play off names of friends in order to buy herself the alone time to make it happen. She didn't really lie. She just made sure there were some gaps in the plans that her family knew about. She was, however, certain that her mother and Josh would not see it in the same way when they found out about what she was doing. She figured that it would come out at some point, but she did not make any effort toward changing her habits in the meantime.

These sketching field trips were how she had really met Mark (he had shown them to their new house on their first day in Terra Nova but there hadn't really been interaction). She had been eight when he had stumbled across her sketching the apple trees in the orchard (she wasn't the only person in their settlement that liked to have some space from other people every once in a while). He had asked all of the "proper" questions at the time. Was she lost? Did her parents know where she was? He had also asked the questions that she thought were the more important ones. What was she sketching? Would she be finished and find her way home before it got dark?

He hadn't made her leave. That had made Mark her new friend immediately. He stumbled across her while she was out sketching every now and again, and she thought that he did an admirable job of tolerating the little girl that had decided that he was worthy of hearing all about what she was drawing and why she was out of the house and why there was an older girl in so many of her sketches that didn't live in Terra Nova and why her father wasn't with them. She never talked to her friends from the school like that. It wasn't the same for most of them. Mark seemed to understand. He had stayed behind in the old world while his dad came to Terra Nova himself. Mark had come on a later Pilgrimage only to discover that his father had caught one of the unfamiliar illnesses that spread through the settlement from time to time and died before Mark's arrival.

She could talk to Mark. Mark seemed good humored enough to put up with talking to her. He even seemed to be amused by some of their conversations. He brought her presents when he went OTG and after one memorable round of pleading, he took it upon himself to check up on her dinosaur hatchling for her when his OTG assignments were in the vicinity of where its tracker placed its location.

Mark was great, but he didn't really understand why she hid so much of her sketching from her family. She didn't expect him to get it. Mark didn't have a family family anymore; he only had the people he could kind of cobble together into a makeshift family for himself (which included some of his buddies from his work but mostly seemed to consist of her as a replacement for a younger sibling that he had never had). He didn't have to worry about treading carefully around a mother who looked at her sometimes as if all she could see was failing a child who wasn't there instead of the girl that was actually in front of her. He didn't know what it was like to feel Josh pour every bit of protectiveness he possessed into her because he was still seeing the ones he had been forced to leave behind.

Sketching helped. It let her feel like she wasn't so buried under all of the things in their house that they did not say.

That weight hit an all-time high when her mother had brought Dr. Malcolm home with her for dinner one evening. He had eaten with them before (and it always put Josh in a grouchy mood), but it had never really been anything other than adding another person with some different topics of conversation to their table. Dr. Malcolm had been a friend of her mom from way back before she had even known her dad, and he had some funny stories that she didn't mind (even if Josh always interrupted them).

Then, there had been that evening. Josh had been working late leaving just the three of them for dinner. She had gone to her room to finish some homework and the adults had been out on the front porch talking quietly. The quiet hadn't lasted. Josh had been yelling and their mother had been using her deceptively calm, controlled voice. Dr. Malcolm had been gone. Then, her mother had been sobbing. Both of them had snapped at her to go back to her room when she had poked her head out to see what was happening.

The tension in their house was too much for her to take in the days that followed with no sign of any of it letting up at all. Her mom was upset. Josh was angry. No one was talking. She just wanted out of the house. She needed her sketching more than ever before just for a break from it all.

She sort of let it become something she did more and more until she was slipping off in the afternoons almost every day to draw under the trees in the orchard instead of going home with one of the girls from school like she was supposed to be doing. The first few times came under the heading of no harm no foul as far as she was concerned, but she started staying later and later until the lack of light started interfering. Neither Josh nor her mother noticed those times. They were too wrapped up in whatever dispute it was that the two of them were having. It was the Saturday that got her busted. She pushed her luck too far one too many times. She just hadn't been thinking things through when she left the house that morning. She just wanted to be out and away.

She hadn't even realized how long it had been (she got caught up in her drawing and hadn't noticed that both lunch and supper had passed her by). She didn't even stop when the shadows starting creeping across her page. She pulled the chem light (the one she was supposed to save for an emergency) from her bag and kept going. She was engrossed in her project - the only clear thought in the back of her head was that she did not want to go home yet. She just needed a little bit longer to be away from it all.

It was Mark that found her.

"Hey," he told her settling down on the ground beside her.

She blinked up at him and realized that it was fully dark around her as she did.

"Hi."

"So . . .," he started, "you've been out here for a long time today."

She shrugged.

"Your mom is talking to Commander Taylor right now. They are about five minutes away from starting a search grid."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh." He looked at her (and Maddy once again appreciated the fact that when Mark looked at her she knew that he wasn't being haunted by other people instead of just seeing her). "You ready to head back?"

She appreciated that as well. He didn't demand. He didn't try to guilt her with the fact that the settlement was about to go into high alert for a missing child. He asked her if she was ready to go back.

"I guess I better get ready real quick," she quipped. "I didn't set out to make her worry." She added.

Mark smiled at her. "Are you going to explain this time?"

She nodded her head at him.

He stood and offered her a hand to pull her to her feet. She needed to talk but not to Mark this time. Her mom and Josh - they needed to talk. She was tired of the tension. She was tired of the tiptoeing. She was tired of living in a house where so many things were not said.


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy would never really be able to tell you what Bermuda was actually like outside of the archived tourism ads from back in the day that she had looked up on her plex. She lived there, but she spent any time that she wasn't working (or sleeping) doing nothing more than attempting to carry on conversations with her father where she remembered not to cross the line into things that she wasn't telling him. He didn't know why they had actually moved or, rather, why it was that he had had to follow her there (she didn't want to get his hopes up if she couldn't make things work). On second thought, saying that her dad had followed her there sounded bad - as if it was some sort of an odd situation where he was keeping tabs on her in some sort of an unwelcome way. That wasn't the case at all.

They didn't want to be that far away from each other. They didn't have to be that far away from each other. Therefore, they worked things out so that they weren't. It really was that simple. They were far enough away from the rest of their family. It just made sense for the two of them to stick together (even if it took several awkward partial conversations with both of them tip toeing around the topic before one of them just finally came out and said it).

She couldn't work on her theory all of the time. She had other projects to complete, and there always seemed to be another couple of items in the pile every time she got something squared away. She spent as much time as she could on trying to find another pattern that could clue her in to what sort of a formula she was going to need to make predictions without forgoing enough sleep to keep her functional (and enough time spent with her dad to keep him from deciding that she was overdoing). She avoided thinking about the fact that the phenomenon might be truly random in nature (meaning that predictions would be ever beyond her grasp).

She knew that Dillon had a general idea (at least) of what she was doing (he had arranged for her move after all), but he periodically did things to remind her that he was keeping an eye out.

Dillon, she had learned fairly early on, had a slight flair for the dramatic. It didn't come out often, but he liked to catch the people around him by surprise with big things whenever he could manage to make it happen. Thus, she knew it was not accidental that she found the packet of papers at her work station one day after he had made a flying visit to check in with one of the other staff members at the facility over something or other that she was not involved in and didn't really know much about other than that there was some sort of a potential patent dispute to be sorted.

Maddy had flipped the folder open thinking that it was a request of some sort to be added to her pile. It hadn't been. She had gotten sucked in rather quickly when she realized exactly what it was she was reading. A lottery winner with no dependents had filed suit against the Terra Nova project claiming that she was being denied the total of her winnings. Other people were granted up to three dependents (spouse plus two children) to travel with them. Most people didn't have three dependents to take. This was the basis of her argument - that she had won a prize that included taking three "guests" and should be allowed to fill those spots as she chose. (In her particular case, she wanted to take her aunt and cousin who were her only family.) She was being represented not just by Dillon's firm but by Dillon himself.

She hadn't known that he had taken that particular lawsuit. She hadn't even known that that particular lawsuit had existed. She had been busy with a half a dozen different projects in varying stages of completeness (as per usual), and she wasn't always good at keeping up with what was happening outside of her personal bubble.

Dillon had left the file there for her to find with a small memo attached that simply stated that all plans needed backups and backups for their backups. It was just very Dillon, and she appreciated the gesture. She was all for keeping as many options open as she could - she always had been.

It also didn't take her much longer to realize that Dillon wasn't the only one that had an idea of what she was doing. She had wondered why it was that no one else had seen what she had seen - she suspected that someone had, but they just didn't know how to go about doing something with it. The job offer (or job offers since it had been repeated) tipped her off to that.

The initial mention of it came from Dillon actually. She had one of his short and basic memos on the screen of her plex telling her she was liable to be getting an offer "to jump ship" in the next few days followed by a comment about doing what she needed to do but to remember to "look before leaping." It didn't make a lot of sense to her, and it made even less sense when the offer came. She wasn't a physicist. It didn't make a lot of sense that they were trying to hire her to be one. She shrugged it off and declined (and each successive attempt at contacting her just further convinced her that that had been the correct decision for her to make). She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something about the tone of it all (and the things that weren't said) felt off to her.

Or, maybe, she was just spoiled by having the type of boss that Dillon was and had no interest in trading him in for some unknown. She told them that she was uninterested in the first place and that is what she continued to tell them. She really didn't have much time to put into thinking about why they were being so persistent. It did leave her a little on edge though - it left her feeling like she needed to work faster than she already was. Functional sleeping patterns took a hit in response.

She had a lot of things that she needed to figure out and some things that she was just going to have to work out through physical trial and error (if she could ever get that far). Then, there was the list of related issues that never seemed to get any shorter because she was always realizing something else that needed to be added to it.

The list was varied. She, for example, knew absolutely nothing about the practical operation of boats. This was going to be a problem at some point because her target area was most likely going to end up being in the middle of the water. She wasn't even sure how to go about procuring a boat (wasn't really even sure if that was something that was possible without getting some intervention a little higher up the chain of command). Bermuda wasn't for tourists any longer. It wasn't like there were people just waiting around to take people out for pleasure cruises.

She also had no access to any sort of map of the world on which the Terra Nova colony was located. There simply was no such thing to be had. She didn't think that the people in the colony actually had anything more than the most rudimentary of layouts for their immediate area. They were building a colony - not sending out explorers. She didn't know where this portal would lead. She couldn't count on it being anywhere even remotely close to where the colony was located. She didn't know what type of travel would be involved in getting to the colony. She had no way of even knowing how to go about attempting to find the colony. This was a huge problem - huge enough that she found herself deciding that what had been edging out her original plan of getting herself a formal invitation i.e. just finding her way through herself was not practical enough to seriously pursue.

She kept working on the patterns. She kept working on the formulas. Sometimes, she tackled one of the items on the related list just for a little break when the numbers were all running together instead of separating themselves out properly for her (which is when she got the idea of creating a reader to pick up the frequency of the original beacon that had been sent through the portal in Hope Plaza - that may or may not have required a little more aggressive research than that she usually engaged in and come close to getting her busted by a couple of different government agencies that luckily had security and IT people who did not work quite as quickly as she did).

Then, one day, she knew where the pattern was going to be before it came into being. She didn't have much in the way of lead time - only twenty three minutes between when she made her prediction and the numbers appearing showing her she was correct. Luckily for her work (and unluckily for practical purposes), this portal seemed to change locations often - only staying open for a range of three minutes to two hours before redirecting itself to a new location anywhere from a few hours to a couple of months later (no wonder there were so many stories about the area). She got better at determining the where and when, but she still couldn't seem to find a method for predicting the duration.

It was time for her to have a chat with Dillon.

Things moved almost too quickly after that. Dillon was the kind of man that could arrange for there to be a boat if she needed a boat. He couldn't, however, do the explaining to her father for her of what she was about to be doing. It sounded bad when you blurted out that you needed to go run some interdimensional travel experiments. She was fairly certain that all her father heard during the first conversation was "potentially dangerous" even though she never uttered those words.

Her dad ended up coming with her on the initial trial day. It was a protectiveness thing (as well as a we are one step closer to our family being together again even though she really didn't think that her father actually believed that yet thing). Dillon made the trip down and came as well (which was a curiosity and an I'm funding this venture so I can invite myself along to see if I want to thing).

The weather was not particularly good, but it wasn't bad enough that their crew wouldn't continue as planned. Maddy was an odd mixture of excited and nauseous. She was sure that she was right, but this was really the first tangible step of proving that. Everything went as planned during their arrival at their location. The disturbance visibly opened at the correct distance from where they were stopped only 1.3 seconds off from her calculations. She was leaning at the rail watching the "box" she had prepared disappear through this new portal when the sound of confused and then slightly panicked voices registered through the intensity as she stared making sure that she was seeing what she thought she was supposed to be seeing.

She barely registered someone saying something involving the word "rammed" when the entire boat jolted underneath her. She was suddenly no longer leaning at the rail. She wasn't on the boat at all. She could hear her dad and Dillon both hollering her name, but it was intermittent because her head kept going under the water that seemed to be everywhere.

Swimming was not a part of her skill set. This was not a problem that she had foreseen on her list of anything and everything that needed an answer.

The wind had picked up, the water kept pushing up over her head, and she couldn't get her bearings between the times that she was under and the times that she was desperately sucking in air. She knew that feeling. Her body recognized the lack of adequate breathing and was pushing her toward a panic that she knew she couldn't afford. She was flailing and trying to push up out of instinct, but up was an ever more uncertain direction with each new dunking. She remembered what came after the not being able to breathe; she remembered the black that took over everything, but she didn't want to go through that again. It felt, however, as if she wasn't going to get a choice in the matter. She couldn't even manage to move her arms well enough to wiggle out of the backpack (of just in case items that she had insisted on bringing) that was weighing her down further.

She could have sworn that she heard her name one last time over the roaring sound that was filling up her ears and felt someone tug at her arm and try to pull her right before she couldn't fight off the darkness any longer.


	20. Epilogue (Mark)

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Mark Reynolds was not having a particularly good day.

He had been OTG for almost a month on a field rotation with a particularly condescending scientist (Wash had finally gone to Taylor with enough stories that he had put a four week rotation cap on anyone being deployed out in the field with the man for the sake of everyone's personal sanity). Mark liked to think that he was pretty good at compartmentalizing and doing the job that needed doing - his job - without letting any personal issues with the people around him get to him, but he was very near his tolerance limit. Besides, being good (rather than competent) at this particular assignment wasn't anything that anyone wanted; the last thing any of them needed (Mark included) was the guy getting it into his head to start requesting one of them to be the designated assignee when he was off colony.

He was just taking some time to do a favor for Zoe. She was always bugging people to check up on the location of that tracker one of the members of the science team had put on that dinosaur hatchling she had taken care of until they made her turn it loose. It had been registering out near the Badlands; he had been doing a rotation out near the Badlands. She had asked, and he had said yes just because it was the easiest thing to do. It was a dinosaur for goodness sakes - a full grown one these days. It didn't need anyone checking up on it. He still told Zoe he would go; she wanted a picture of all things. He probably told her yes way too often. It was way too easy to pretend that he had gotten that little sister that a younger him had always claimed he wanted when he was playing along and letting her boss him around.

Besides, just a little beyond the general area he would be heading was that place in the Badlands where he had gotten those rocks she liked that one time. He figured he could pick her up some more. It wouldn't take him long (and her sitting outside sketching in that "rock garden" she had made in the back of their house seemed to keep everybody calmer than when she went hiding out in the orchards to do it).

It wasn't supposed to take long.

He certainly wasn't supposed to have hit something buried in the loose dirt that got piled up by the wind out there going faster than he should have been going and wrecked on whatever it had been.

He wasn't supposed to be stuck out here.

He wasn't in the best of shape; he could tell that even through the woozy feeling in his head or maybe because of the woozy feeling in his head (and when did he start using words like woozy). He had never wrecked a vehicle that he was driving before, but there had to be a first time for everything he supposed. He had been driving too fast. He was blowing off a little of the built up irritation from the never ending needling comments that had been directed his way for the last month. It had been a dumb thing to do in unfamiliar territory (but, in his defense, it was the Badlands - there was literally nothing but dirt and rocks for long stretches all through it).

He couldn't quite decide whether he was glad that no one else was with him (since that meant that he hadn't hurt anyone else) or sorry that there was no one else there (because it meant that there was no one there to help). He was starting to be pretty certain that Zoe wasn't going to get her picture. He hated to disappoint the kid. Those eyes were pretty hard to turn down.

His leg was definitely caught against some piece or another of the vehicle that was definitely not where it should have been, and he didn't have any feeling in his left arm - he was sure that was not a good sign. He couldn't remember why exactly - all of his emergency field medicine training seemed to be stuck in the part of his brain that was somewhere beyond the wooziness where he couldn't quite get at it. He didn't think that help was going to be coming in time. He couldn't reach the radio (wasn't entirely certain where the radio had ended up); he hadn't been specific about where it was that he was going or how long he expected it to take. There had been a whole lot of decisions that, in retrospect, were probably not wise. That was the problem though - you never thought about the things you did being less well-thought out than they should be until it caught up with you.

There may not be much out in the Badlands, but that didn't mean that the area wasn't free of its share of scavengers. This wasn't a particularly friendly wildlife territory, he wasn't going anywhere, and he was pretty sure he was bleeding enough to call every predator in the vicinity. He was kind of hoping that the black that was swimming around the edges of his vision was going to catch up with him soon. Given the circumstances, he was pretty sure that he would be a lot better off being unconscious for what was likely coming. That felt a lot like giving up, but he had used up all of his determination and hopefulness during the first hour or so that he had been stuck there.

He had the strangest thought that he was hearing a voice right before he noticed that Zoe's eyes seemed to be looking at him as something pushed at his shoulder. He blinked because that couldn't be right. Zoe was exactly where she should be - safe and sound back in the colony. Even after blinking, the eyes were still there. It wasn't Zoe's face, however, that was peering down at him. He was pretty sure that must be an angel that he was seeing (which meant that he was already further gone than he had thought he was). An angel, however, was a much better view to go out with than teeth sinking down toward him, so he felt himself smile. Her mouth was moving, but the words weren't registering. She turned her head as if she was saying something to someone over her shoulder out of his line of sight, and he found himself wishing that she would look back at him while he could still see her. That's when the blackness took over.

He thought he had woken up a couple of times already, but he wasn't really sure. Everything was rather hazy. He thought he had heard jumbled sounding phrases about concussions and compound fractures and someone recovering. He had the impression that the words had been being said over him rather than to him, but he knew for sure that he was awake this time. He was also awake enough that he knew that it wasn't going to last long. He didn't know what they had him on, but it was trying awfully hard to pull him back under (and he was pretty sure that he was going to be losing the battle shortly).

He registered Zoe sitting in a chair pulled up close to his side. She was nearly bouncing up and down in her excitement over something, but he couldn't tell what all she was saying. He blamed the speed she was using to talk as much as the way his head didn't seem to be able to keep up with processing what was going on around him.

"So much better than new rocks and a picture."

What? What did that mean? He couldn't follow what she was saying. He would figure it out later when he wasn't still so tired.


End file.
